Stuck in the anxiety cycle? Counselling can help you break free

Living with anxiety is tough, it can impact your quality of life, relationships and ability to function in the world. In this article, I explain how the anxiety cycle can maintain and escalate your anxiety and how counselling can support you to break the cycle and build a more satisfying and enjoyable life.

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is a natural emotional response which aims to protect us from threats which may or may not happen in the future. It is based on the fear response, which motivated our ancestors to escape from imminent threats in their environment. In the modern world, we often feel under constant threat from situations at work or at home that we are unable to control. When we are unable to escape from these threats our anxiety can escalate.

This chronic state of anxiety can lead to physical symptoms, including an increased heart rate, sweating, dizziness or nausea. We may feel apprehensive, agitated and irritable, suffer from poor sleep, be plagued by constant worry, have difficulty concentrating or find our mind going blank. All of this can take a heavy toll on us and will often have a negative and draining effect on those around us, impacting negatively on work, social and family situations.

How the anxiety cycle maintains your anxiety

The onset of anxiety

When faced with a threat our brain automatically releases chemicals that prepare us for “fight or flight,” and the anxious thoughts created in our emotional brain inform us about the threat. This response in our brain and body motivates us to take action to escape from whatever we believe is threatening us. When this happened in our ancestors and they were able to successfully escape from a predator their bodies would return to their normal state, they had escaped from the threat, were no longer afraid, and could move on with their life.

Avoidance

In the modern world, we often feel threatened by ongoing situations we cannot escape from, for example, a difficult meeting at work. Our anxiety is motivating us to take action to escape so we avoid attending the meeting today. But the issue has not gone away, the meeting is rescheduled for tomorrow. At other times, we might feel anxious but are unsure why, we might avoid these uncomfortable feelings by having a drink or distract ourselves by working or watching television. 

Short-term relief

While these avoidance strategies help reduce our anxiety in the short term the threat has not gone away, our body does not return to normal. By allowing our anxiety to control our behaviour we have missed an opportunity to learn that by facing our fears and taking action to address the threat we can reduce our anxiety, that these feelings and thoughts will pass if we stop pushing them away.

Long term escalation

Avoiding our fears allows our anxiety to grow. There is a self-reinforcing cycle between the unconscious activation of our body, which is interpreted by our emotional brain as a reason to be anxious, resulting in a flood of anxious thoughts. These thoughts are then interpreted by our brain as threatening, so it releases more chemicals to prepare for action, prompting more anxious thoughts and the cycle continues. Our sensitivity to feeling anxious increases, and we are more likely to avoid these feelings in future, embedding the pattern of avoidance in our brain.

Breaking the cycle

Breaking this cycle is difficult; the initial activation of our body is an unconscious response that we cannot control. It is also hard for us to stop the anxious thoughts that fuel this bodily response. The chemicals that prepare us for “fight or flight” also override our ability to think logically. To protect itself from attack, our body’s ability to escape is prioritised, and our ability to think logically is switched off. Focussing on our anxious thoughts without the ability to challenge them can actually make them worse.

How counselling can help you break free from the anxiety cycle

Anxiety is treatable, you can break free from this cycle by changing how you relate to the anxiety response in your body so that you can reduce your emotional response to the anxious arousal. Your counsellor can help you to tolerate the uncomfortable feelings and disengage from the anxious thoughts to allow the discomfort to pass so that you are no longer afraid of your anxiety.

A reduction of anxiety in the future requires an acceptance of anxiety in the present, which can be challenging; initially, your anxiety may get worse. To help you cope with this, your counsellor can teach you to use breathing and grounding exercises that will help you to calm the anxiety in your body by activating the “rest and digest” response, the opposite of the “fight and flight” response. They can help you to become more aware of what is happening in your body and to soothe yourself when you feel threatened.

When we are chronically anxious, we are focussed on our fears of what may happen in the future, based on our experience of what has happened in the past. Our ability to engage with what is happening right now is diminished. By focusing on what is actually happening in our body in the present moment, we can learn to soothe ourselves when we feel threatened,d which can help us to see that our feelings are uncomfortable but not dangerous.

By providing a safe, supportive, non-judgemental environment to explore your anxiety, a counsellor can help you to better understand the situations that make you feel anxious, your fears about what might happen in the future. For some, this might be a self-consciousness in social or performance situations, others may be worried or anxious about a wide range of everyday activities or have irrational fears of specific situations.

Your anxiety might be triggered in situations that remind you of past traumatic events. If you struggle to identify what it is that makes you feel anxious exploring this with your counsellor can help to clarify what is triggering your anxiety. You will also come to understand how your existing coping strategies might help you to avoid your anxiety and keep you trapped in the anxiety cycle.

Humanistic counselling

Humanistic counselling is one of the many different types of counselling that can be effective in reducing anxiety. It is based on the development of a relationship of trust to support you in becoming your authentic self by exploring your subjective experience of the world to reduce the anxiety associated with behaving in ways that are conditioned by your past experiences.

Having identified the situations that make you feel anxious, your counsellor can help you to explore the facts, feelings, thoughts and sensations associated with these situations and to distinguish actual danger from perceived threats. You can explore how your fears might be linked to the unconscious beliefs about yourself and others that were formed by your past experiences and develop more compassion for the fearful parts of yourself. Making sense of your unique experience will allow you to challenge your anxious thoughts, to better understand and accept yourself, and to build a more satisfying, authentic and connected life.

Taking the first step to reduce your anxiety

If your anxiety is impacting on your wellbeing, relationship or ability to function working with a counsellor could really help. It can be difficult to reach out for help, the idea of talking to someone you don’t know about your anxiety can itself be a source of anxiety, but you do not have to continue fighting your anxiety alone. Having the courage to reach out could be the first step in facing your fears, overcoming your anxiety, and creating the life you deserve. This can be an opportunity to embark on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth, to confront your fears and take control of your anxiety instead of letting it control you.