The common experience of anxiety is often not a result of one thing but a complex emotion with different dimensions and precedents. It is no surprise that in modern psychotherapy, many books and approaches have been dedicated to the topic. In my work, I meet anxiety more than any other. It doesn't often arrive with a diagnosis from a manual; it arrives as a clenching in the throat, a heart that wants to bolt out of the chest, or a restless mind that refuses to stop weighing out possible futures.
Although anxiety can be seen from a biological lens as a ‘glitch in our neurotransmitters’ or an overactive amygdala, it is too reductive to consider it solely a ‘chemical imbalance’. Our bodies can carry the score of past trauma that refuses to stay buried. For others, it is the ‘shame of the limited self’ - an exhausting fear that if we are truly seen, we will be exposed as unworthy. And for many, it is a masked sense of longing – freedom from living a life that doesn't feel it belongs to us, disconnected from any real sense of meaning.
The Uninvited Guest
Cognitive distortions, such as catastrophising lead some of us to expect the worst to happen, or overgeneralising takes place where it can feel as if one failure means total failure. Anxiety does not arise on its own. Our socio-cultural environments play significant roles in shaping our experience of it. Society can place a high value on achievement, productivity, and ‘success’, creating immense pressure on us and the people that matter to us. Then there is the constant barrage of information from different media, particularly fear-inducing news cycles designed to get more clicks, which can amplify the sense of uncertainty and fear. In addition, if you are minoritised – such as by ethnicity, disability, sexuality or identity, then social isolation, systemic oppression, and the breakdown of community support systems contribute to feelings of insecurity and anxiety.
We try to ignore it. We try to ‘fix’ it with productivity hacks or distract ourselves to escape it. But anxiety is a patient guest. It can wait in the shadows of our achievements, in the midst of a crowd, or a quiet moment, inviting a question we are often too afraid to answer alone: What is it that you are truly afraid of?
Some spiritual traditions refer to the peaceful ‘ground of being’ that exists if we were to strip away our titles, our roles, and expectations attached to our limited identity. This is both deceptively simple that it can be experienced in an instant, and could take a lifetime of learning to truly realise. Even when an awareness of our natural potential for contentment arises, it can often be veiled in our carefully constructed defences. In the process of protecting something precious to us, a quiet, trembling gets created and then persists - we can label it as anxiety, but could it just be part of being alive in a world we cannot control?
The Will to Decide
If you are reading this, maybe you have tried enough personal development stuff already. Perhaps you are weary of the ‘textbook’ solutions that feel as cold as the screen they appear on. In my practice, I don't aim to ‘cure’ your anxiety as if it were a fever. Is it even possible to live without any anxiety while living with any care, personal values, or love? So instead, we work on something much more substantial: the will to make decisions that we can live with. We learn to listen to the tremor. We look at the ploys a cautious mind might attempt to find safety in our uncertain world. We move from trying to silence the inner turmoil to learning how to dance with it.
Therapy is not a place where I, the ‘expert’, fix you. It is a space to find how to live - not in spite of fears, but in a way that makes our lives worth living with them.