We all know anxiety is prevalent these days—you or someone you love probably struggles with it. And you may have experienced that the tools and strategies that work for your friend don’t work for you. Or maybe you tried therapy and realize that it will only take you so far. Why does what works for one person not work for another? Or what works some of the time doesn’t work all the time?
In my previous post, “What is your type of anxiety??” I have described three patterns or types of anxiety that anxiety is organized around. Knowing your type of anxiety is an important place to start.
In addition to understanding your type of anxiety, it’s also important to know that anxiety is a multisystem experience—meaning it affects you in four channels:
- Emotionally
- Cognitively
- Behaviorally
- Somatic
There is a constant connection between these four channels, but research shows that they do not necessarily move together in harmony. What this means is that you may experience severe somatic symptoms of anxiety without accompanying anxious thoughts, or you may experience recurrent anxious thoughts with very little behavioral activation. In other words, each person’s presentation of anxiety is unique.
So what does this mean for you and your anxiety journey?
First, it’s helpful to understand how your anxiety manifests through all four channels. You can keep track of this on a sheet of paper or in a journal. Create a section for each channel and begin to identify what you feel in each section when you are anxious.
- What subjective feelings are there when you feel anxious?
- What thoughts and beliefs accompany your anxiety?
- What do you do when you are sad? Think about both active behavior and passive behavior.
- What physical sensations do you feel when you are anxious and where? For example, do you notice muscle tension, changes in breathing, physical sensations like pins and needles, “electricity” sensations, or butterflies in your stomach? Where do you feel it?
Next, think about whether there is anyone among these four quadrants that you are ignoring. It is common to focus on what is more prominent, which makes sense. However, if you only deal with your experience of anxiety in these visible features, you miss out on other aspects of anxiety and ways to deal with it. Ignoring any of these four can keep you in trouble.
If your experience of anxiety is primarily cognitive, and you’re dealing with it only by reliving your thoughts, you may find yourself in trouble if you don’t allow yourself to feel the emotions or connect to the physical manifestations of your anxiety. Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor observed that the physiological wave of one feelingswhen fully felt it lasts about 90 seconds. What makes it go beyond that is the story we build around it—the resistance, the resistance, the refusal to feel it. Feeling the emotion is often the fastest way through it.
Attending to your physical state can change the way you feel about yourself, others, and your environment. Have you ever been stuck in traffic, late and pissed off? Your body is tense, your mind is cataloging everything that is wrong. But then you consciously relax your grip on the steering wheel, open your mouth and take a slow breath. For a few moments, the situation feels less dire. Maybe you’ll start singing your favorite song and forget about being late. Traffic did not change; you did
If you are acutely aware of your emotions and physical sensations when you are anxious, are you also paying attention to the beliefs and behaviors that accompany them? Our brains are meaning-making machines, and repetitive thought patterns become the default nerve roads Addressing anxiety in all four channels means not only noticing how your body feels, but also examining the thoughts and behaviors that follow.
Conclusion? Anxiety is not a one-size-fits-all experience. The way through starts with knowing yourself: your type, your channels and which ones you tend to ignore.
Start there. Keep track of what you notice. Be curious instead of reactive. Because when anxiety is experienced as information instead of judgment, you have already changed your relationship with it.
And that’s a very good place to start.
