Breaking the cycle of anxiety

How do you experience anxiety? Is it an occasional and usual feeling you get about events past or present? Or do you experience it as an ever-present feeling? From the moment you wake up until the time when you are able to sleep? 

Does anxiety dog your every decision and every thought? Do you feel as if your anxiety is out of control and not how you want to be but are unable to change the feeling?

If this is familiar to you then you have my deep and honest compassion. It is not the way we were meant to be. But there is hope - it does not have to be this way and you can change it!

Whatever the causes of our anxiety, and there are many, a fundamental factor is how we choose to respond to the causes.

Sometimes the causes are trauma/trauma-based and require looking at and gentle, careful reprocessing. Other times the causes of anxiety can come from a place of powerlessness and low self-worth. For example, if you do not feel able to change things in your daily living that you want/need to change then anxiety coming from powerlessness is really not surprising.

If, on the other hand, you are not able to feel you are worthy of being heard and your wants/needs are not considered then, again, anxiety is a “normal” response.

It might be that your partner is overbearing and does not consider you, maybe you were never good enough in the eyes of your parents, teachers, peers or colleagues. Maybe you were never told you were good enough - warts and all. Perhaps the fear of “getting it wrong” and thus being seen as less than is what causes your anxiety to go into overdrive. 

If your anxiety is intense and/or prolonged, you may have tried different ways of dealing with the feelings. The most commonly recognised way of dealing with anxiety is to subsume it with the use of drink or drugs. There are other ways we try to manage the feelings though. These can be self-isolation, over or under-eating, self-harm, excessive exercise or people-pleasing.

Any course of action we take to alleviate our anxiety is, I feel, an expression of us trying to regulate how we feel. Some are more successful than others but with chronic anxiety, they have either ceased working altogether or only temporarily ease our anxiety e.g. we binge eat to change how we feel and then feel guilty about our calorie intake or we self-harm and then feel shame and disgust at the damage we have inflicted on ourselves. With drink and drugs, quite often the temporary relief we feel when we are drunk or high is outweighed by the hangover or financial cost of getting the temporary relief.

This can feel very much like we are trapped in a cycle of anxiety which causes us to try to change our feelings and inevitably leads to feeling the anxiety again. We repeat the cycle and keep getting the same unsatisfactory results.  

There is a way out of this cycle though. As the things that led us to being anxious might be numerous and serious, the solution I am talking about is not easy and rarely quick. So why consider this solution, you might ask?

Well, the solution is effective and can be long-lasting, if not permanent. The solution is to be found in yourself and this discovery is aided with the help of a skilled and compassionate counsellor.

Said counsellor can hold the space for you, hold the anxiety and by doing so allow you the space to consider the causes of your anxiety. You are free to look at how the anxiety is experienced, the effects on you, and how those you love are affected by the anxiety. When we are able to express our anxiety and distress it no longer is something shapeless and ever present in our thinking. Rather it becomes defined and quantified. When it has a shape and structure we are better placed to consider ways that might change its shape and structure, ways that anxiety affects us. 

When we are at a place where we can identify our anxiety we have already come a long way, we have already put a lot of effort in. It helps to be able to acknowledge this. It is a demonstration not only of our willingness to change but also a demonstration of the effectiveness of our efforts. Something that was not readily available when we were in the grips of the cycle of anxiety. 

This stage is not the end of the journey though. When we are able to identify our anxiety, its causes and its effects we are then able to consider how we can change the cycle. Well done for getting this far. Both you and the counsellor have shown resilience and tenacity - shown a desire to change. How unimaginable was that when anxiety was in full control of your life?

So what next? Well now is an ideal time to consider what you can do to change the anxiety cycle. Be warned though, the cycle will not want you to change. It has probably become a pattern of being that you are used to, it likes its presence in your life, is comfortable with its role and certainly does not want to change this. It may present you with unwarranted and intrusive thoughts. Thoughts such as being stupid to think you can change or you are not strong enough or good enough to change the way you feel. Again here a counsellor can help you challenge these thoughts and in doing so you are able to find alternative ways of thinking. This is not easy and quite often you will have to try several different ways of responding before you find ways of thinking and feeling that suit you best. 

Remember - practice does not make perfect - practice makes possible.

When you are able to challenge and rethink the old, anxious ways of being, you are in the realms of the beginning of the end of the need for counselling. You may change the counselling sessions from weekly to fortnightly. As you become more confident you might have monthly counselling sessions. Some of my clients are at a place where they only come back for a check-in and regrounding very occasionally.

For the counsellor, this is not a problem. They do not see it as disloyalty or ingratitude. This counsellor sees it as a sign of success.

Finally, it may be that you feel the need to change the time between sessions to be more frequent. That is also alright. If the analogy of two steps forward and one step back is applicable, which I feel it is, then you have still made progress of one step forward. 

Please do not suffer/struggle alone. It takes courage to be vulnerable enough to seek help. Seeking that help is where meaningful change can begin. You are worth the effort it takes.