What does anxiety do?
When we’re too anxious we won’t be able to gather new information, think clearly about the problem, explore our options, give calm and clear feedback to others, and find creative solutions that consider the needs of all. And fear can run amuck, flooding our system with adrenalin and hi-jacking our neo-cortex—the thinking part of the brain.
Anxiety is a mean trickster. It signals you to pay attention, but it also turns your brain to oatmeal, narrows and rigidifies your focus, and obscures the real issues from view. Anxiety tricks you out of the “now” as you obsessively replay and regret the past and worry about the future. It tricks you into losing sight of your competence and your capacity for love, creativity and joy. It tricks you into believing that you are lesser and smaller than you really are. Anxiety interferes with self-regard and self-respect, the foundation on which all else rests.
It makes no difference whether you view your anxiety as a product of your genes, faulty brain circuitry, early trauma, current stress, world events, or the moon and stars and grace.
Whatever your perspective, one thing is certain: Anxiety can make you feel dreadful about yourself. It can impede your capacity to think. It can dig a big negative groove in your brain and make it impossible for you to hang on to a positive thought for more than five seconds. It can affect your body in ways that can feel crippling
When anxiety gets really bad, prepare to shake, hyperventilate, feel nauseous, throw up, get dizzy, sweaty, antsy, jittery, tense, irritable, agitated or otherwise hyper-aroused. You may have difficulty swallowing and feel a constant lump in your throat. In bed at night, you may grind your teeth and jerk your legs like an overcaffeinated marionette. You may breathe too rapidly, hold your breath, or feel like you might stop breathing entirely if you don’t force yourself to inhale and exhale. You may call 911 convinced that you are having a heart attack—or that you are losing control and going crazy. You may feel numb, faint, physically immobilized, exhausted, detached from your body, and, at the same time, unbearably stuck in it.
What harms you is not the dreadful way that anxiety feels in the body, whether it’s moderate agitation or a full-blown panic attack. We are all capable of managing the most anguishing physical sensations when we know what is happening to us, when we understand that what is happening is frightening but not really dangerous, when we know we won’t die from it, and when we know that eventually the feelings will subside.
As I explain in The Dance of Fear, what harms you is when you mistake anxiety for being you. You mistakenly see yourself as a weak and impaired individual, rather than as a strong, competent person who happens to have an overactive fear response.
Anxiety will always be with us. But we needn’t let it silence our authentic voices, close our hearts to the different voices of others or stop us from acting with clarity, compassion and courage. In today’s world, no challenge is more important than that.