Coping skills alone won’t get you to the root of anxiety: 3 of 4 in the “How to deal with anxiety” series from a Madison, WI Counselor for Anxiety
This blogs series, “How to deal with anxiety” by an anxiety therapist,
covers the following four topics:
Getting to the root of anxiety
Today is the third in the series, and I’ll be exploring the root cause of anxiety.
Coping skills for anxiety and the root cause of anxiety: You need both
I like to think of coping skills for anxiety as the short game. Getting to the root cause of anxiety is the long game. They complement each other. How? You can use your coping skills for anxiety to find the root cause!
Anxiety shows up in a lot of different ways. You might notice a pattern that whenever you drive, you worry that you’ll get in an accident (even though you are an excellent driver). Or that whenever you see an email come through from your boss, you think you’re getting fired (even though you get great performance reviews). In moments like these, you might notice your heart beating faster and that it is harder to breathe. You might recognize these as signs of anxiety but not understand why they are showing up.
When your chest hurts, your heart is racing, and you’re having trouble breathing, you could care less about the root cause of your anxiety. All you want is relief, for the feeling of dread to go away.
Coping skills are the first step in getting to the root cause of anxiety
This is where coping skills for anxiety come in really handy. Things like grounding and deep breaths can help move you out of acute anxiety in order to continue functioning in the moment.
So you do some research on coping skills for anxiety - they can be really helpful!
You practice physical and mental grounding.
You might even look up long term coping strategies for anxiety and experiment with deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and guided meditation for anxiety.
You tell yourself these are just thoughts, that the thoughts are not true. And a lot of it helps decrease your anxiety.
But you know there are no guarantees in life. And although most of the time you know the chances of what you’re anxious about really happening is probably not worth losing sleep over, a part of you keeps getting outsmarted by the anxiety. Even though you keep telling yourself they are just thoughts, the anxiety gets worse. It becomes less easy to talk yourself out of it. The anxiety starts lasting longer, and showing up in more places. It gets more and more intrusive, and more and more confusing. And it seems to feed on itself.
To understand the root cause of anxiety, you need to know there is always something underneath the anxiety
What may not be apparent is that the anxiety is telling you something. It’s telling you that there are emotions stored from previous experiences that haven’t been processed. And until you feel and process those emotions, the anxiety will keep trying harder and harder to get your attention.
People often choose to avoid feeling emotions because processing things like anger, fear, shame and jealousy can feel scary. It’s also hard to find spaces where you can actually process the confusing things you are feeling.
But you might also be pretty sick of the anxiety, the intrusions, being caught off guard and set back over and over.
The anxiety dilemma: keep avoiding emotions or risk uncovering something?
So you’re between a rock and a hard place: either you keep burying your emotions and continue to feel the anxiety, or you start the seemingly perilous journey of trying to get at the root of your anxiety.
Some people are happy to keep meditating and distracting themselves when anxiety shows up. And those coping mechanisms can be a life-saver. But you do have a choice, if that’s not enough for you. You can dive into the exploration of where your anxiety is coming from. It’s not for the faint of heart (but neither is continuing to combat your anxiety).
Get to the root cause of anxiety Step 1: Observe
Whenever you feel anxious, keep using your coping skills for anxiety. Then, when they have allowed you to be aware of your surroundings again, start observing. What’s going on around you? What just happened? What do you see, smell, hear? What happened right before the anxiety started? Keep going backwards in time and observe as much as you can.
It will be hard not to try to figure things out when you’re observing. As much as you can, don’t worry about finding an answer. The act of observing is really powerful. It takes time to notice connections.
Get to the root of anxiety Step 2: Stay curious
All that observation that you will do around the times that you experience anxiety will get you lots of information. If you are a note-taker, take notes. If you’re not, trust that your brain is filing away this information, even if you are not consciously holding it top of mind.
Every time you feel anxious, pause yourself. Over time, you may notice patterns. There might be a particular feeling that keeps coming up. Dread, insecurity, helplessness, or rejection are some possibilities. There might be a theme in the anxious situations. Maybe a lot of the anxiety comes when you’re driving, or about to see your parents, or worried you did something wrong.
Again, these steps are not for getting answers. The root cause of anxiety is not as easy as that. All you need to do is observe and gather information. It may not feel like you are doing anything, but observing yourself does make shifts in your brain.
Get to the root cause of anxiety Step 3: Feel the emotions
This work of using coping skills, observing, gathering information, and staying curious is hard work. It probably won’t be obvious, which might be frustrating. It also takes courage and persistence. And, when you do get to the emotions that are underneath the anxiety, you’ll need to process them.
It can feel scary to feel emotions. Most of the time feeling emotions is scary because we have felt them alone.
Since the only way to move through emotions is to feel them, who do you trust enough to share your emotions with? It could be a close friend, partner, family member.
Feel the emotions….with another person
Maybe you don’t trust anyone enough to share your emotions yet. Or maybe you don’t even know what your emotions are yet! You might have people you trust, but you have so many emotions you can’t share all of them with your loved ones. Your emotions might be so complicated and confusing that you can’t make sense of them even with your loved ones.
Whether or not you have people you trust to share your emotions with, counseling for anxiety is a space where you can get support in getting to the root of your anxiety. If you are going down the road of finding the root cause of your anxiety, I do recommend finding a therapist. It’s hard work, and emotions are tricky to navigate. (Finding a therapist is hard, but not impossible - here’s a guide!)
Getting to the root of anxiety is a process. It takes time and will feel confusing and frustrating as well as relieving. You might uncover loneliness, rage, shame, hopelessness. It’s hard to admit we all experience those emotions. And, if you have spent most of your life burying these emotions, it might actually feel worse when you begin the process of uncovering and feeling them. Know this is normal, although painful.
People need space and time to process our emotions. As you untangle your emotions, you see connections that you hadn’t noticed before.
As you process the pain, you make more room for discovering things like playfulness, delight, confidence, and trust.
And who doesn’t want more of that?
Thus far in the “How to deal with anxiety” series we have covered what anxiety feels like, coping skills for anxiety, and today, getting to the root of anxiety. The last blog in this series is about long term strategies. Next time I’ll get into some long term coping strategies for anxiety that you can build into your life in order to help decrease the amount of anxiety you’re experiencing.
About the Author
As an anxiety therapist, I see every day that examining and processing our experiences has the power to decrease anxiety.
As the owner and founder of Bronwyn Shiffer Psychotherapy, based in Madison, WI, I support women struggling with anxiety and depression. I work with women via online therapy in Wisconsin and Massachusetts. Counseling for anxiety includes getting to the root of anxiety. It is a process, as is depression therapy and therapy for HSPs.
Looking for more support in exploring the root of your anxiety?