De-mystifying anxiety

Anxiety is a common problem, but fortunately, it can be resolved more easily than someone who experiences it may think.

Psychoeducation can be an effective tool in therapy and can be helpful for people who experience anxiety. Once the person understands more about the anxiety response, they can begin to explore ways of managing it.

One useful way of understanding anxiety is to consider three things that can contribute to how anxious we feel:

1. We're overestimating a threat.
2. We're underestimating our ability to cope with the threat.
3. We're underestimating the likelihood of receiving support in the face of the threat.

These three things can work together to increase feelings of anxiety.

For example, if you don't overestimate the threat but still underestimate your ability to cope and underestimate the likelihood of receiving support, the situation may feel more manageable. If you overestimate the threat and underestimate the likelihood of receiving support but feel confident in your ability to cope, this may also influence how anxious you feel. Likewise, believing you will receive adequate support may help you feel more able to face a situation.

An anxious response

Different parts of the brain are involved in our experience of anxiety. Sometimes the response can feel immediate and automatic, while at other times anxious thoughts and predictions can play a greater role.

For example, after a traumatic experience, particular sounds, places or other stimuli may become associated with what happened and can act as triggers. At other times, thoughts about what might happen can contribute to feelings of fear or anxiety.

These processes can also interact. Anxiety-provoking thoughts may increase the physical anxiety response, while physical sensations can in turn influence our thoughts.

How to manage anxiety

Some approaches to managing anxiety include exposure, self-regulation and cognitive restructuring.

Exposure

Pick an event or situation that you usually avoid and encourage yourself to experience it gradually and safely. You may have feelings of anxiety, but you don't have to respond to these feelings in the same way as you used to.

Over time, sitting with uncomfortable emotions in manageable situations may help change your response and increase your confidence in your ability to cope.

If the thought of using this exposure technique is overwhelming, see if you can grade the situations you feel anxious in and try this out on the one where you have the least anxious response. Once you've tried it with that, you may find it easier to try it with situations that you find a lot more challenging.

Self-regulation

You can experience an anxiety response but use intentional actions, such as slowing your breathing or relaxing your body, to help regulate some of the physical symptoms.

Breathing exercises can help some people relax their bodies, or you can do body scans by focusing on certain muscles and tensing them, then relaxing them until your whole body feels more relaxed.

Mindfulness exercises are good examples of self-regulation. Mindfulness usually includes being present in the moment and not becoming wrapped up in your thoughts. It also means experiencing the now without a sense of judgement.

Cognitive restructuring

This involves understanding why your body may be responding the way it is and examining the thoughts surrounding that response. You could remind yourself that a fight, flight or freeze response can sometimes be triggered when you feel threatened, even when you are not in immediate danger.

Feeling scared is not necessarily an indication that you are actually in danger. Recognising this can help you begin to question some of the thoughts and predictions contributing to your anxiety.

If the process of exposure, self-regulation and cognitive restructuring seems too daunting to try all at once, you can start with the cognitive restructuring element. Remind yourself of this way of understanding anxiety: overestimating threat, underestimating your ability to cope and underestimating the likelihood of receiving support.

You may find it easy to recall times when you overestimated a threat in the past, but when the event happened, it was less threatening than you expected. You may recall other times when something didn't go to plan, but you found yourself being able to cope or receiving support.

Reminding yourself of these three types of memory in advance may help reduce the intensity of the anxiety response if you're thinking about something anxiety-provoking in the future.

You may not feel completely comfortable, but you may begin to feel more able to manage your anxiety. Instead of avoidance, you may be more able to plan ahead and increase the chances of securing the outcome you want.