Anticipatory Anxiety

anticipatory anxiety it's a movie in your head that is making you miserable could be causing all sorts of problems in your life it blocks Joy let's talk about this and I want to give you some things that can help so first a secret all anxiety is anticipatory now for people who experience somatic anxiety which means the physical symptoms of it they'll say no that's not true mine is somatic it's in my body but even when those feelings are in your body your brain is tying them to something right you have a feeling of dread you're like okay I'm not worried about anything but there must be something I need to worry about in the future so that sematic piece yes it's happening right now but the real problem is the anticipation of some type of danger so if you're new to my channel I was a psychotherapist for 20 years before I started this channel I specialized working with anxiety and Trauma and I started this channel to try to help people around the world feel more joy in their lives so if you do support what I'm doing here and you can click that subscribe button it's a big help and if you end up liking this video clicking that like button that'd be great okay let's get into the topic my guess is you already know what anticipatory anxiety is but really it's any kind of anxiety that is tied to a future event sometimes these can be major events that you're worried about most people have that once in a while in their life other times it could be more minor events or it could be something that's related to a very upsetting or traumatic incident from your past so you've learned to be afraid of XYZ type object or event and the thing with anticipatory anxiety when it gets out of control is that you eventually de develop fear of fear you develop an anxiety about oh no am I going to get anxious so this is super common with many types of anxiety but let's say social anxiety could be a great example of this because people will not just know that they are anxious at social events when they're at them they will project I am going to be anxious at that event and then I am going to show signs of my anxiety at that event and then thinking about that makes me even more anxious now so I begin to have an anxiety about getting the anxiety and that's going to lead to avoidance and next week a video on avoidance is coming out so all I really want to say here is that avoidance then becomes reinforcing and increases the anxiety related to other future events but as I said initially anticipatory anxiety is really part of almost every single anxiety disorder anticipatory anxiety is not a diagnosis in and of itself it's not one of the things somebody would get diagnosed with it's more like it is an expression that describes the phenomena of the worrying so the human brain is an anticipatory machine right that is one reason humans have been so successful on this planet we see a potential problem coming up we can anticipate it we can think through steps to get there all of that is adaptive healthy reasonable right so in the scientific Community right we'll talk about fear responses as being functionally adaptive behaviors and perceptual responses right responses to things we perceive and when these are elicited during danger when these happen when something is happening that's dangerous appropriate defenses responses kick in that help us avoid injury help us reduce danger that's your fight flight freeze and then in terms of anticipation of danger right a little bit of anxiety can be adaptive we see a problem coming we think through the steps we might have some of those innate biological responses of adrenaline kicking in a little bit which helps us focus and plan but when too much kicks in of that fear response when the fear is not present that's when this moves into non-adaptive anxiety that's when this moves into painful unnecessary anxiety so last week I released a video on the difference between fear and anxiety and in short fear is in the moment and anxiety is almost always anticipatory let's say there's a dinosaur right in front of you or something extremely dangerous in your life right in front of you boom your fight flight freeze response kicks in you run you flee you freeze or you fight that's appropriate but when you have the thought of that dinosaur attacking you or the thought of whatever it is that you're afraid of it's just the thought physically your body is responding almost as strongly as if it was actually happening but it's not there's nothing to flee from physically there's nothing to physically fight and there's nothing to no reason to physically freeze doesn't mean we don't do one of those three things but there's no immediate danger present to cause that so let's talk about this cycle the threat of a future problem kicks in to anticipatory anxiety that moves immediately into your body all those physical responses those physical responses make you feel like I have to do something here I have to run fight or flee and it's that feeling of having to do that which is then leading you to the overwhelm to the freeze state or to the opposite the kind of overthinking overanalyzing overly activated where you can't sleep right and this feeling of I have to do something often can lead to either a compulsive Behavior or avoidance and one reason that compulsive behaviors and avoidance then reinforce this cycle and actually keep the fear going is that you get temporary relief from the compulsive Behavior or the avoidance so you decide to avoid something so glad I decided to avoid that that positive response is training your old brain that that's a good response if this ever comes up again let's do that again so then that feeds this cycle and then where does this cycle go this cycle goes to that fear of fear so it's not just a fear of one event it's fear of any event like that and you begin to experience those anxiety symptoms earlier and earlier and earlier and if we're anxious about future events but we begin to anticipate it and feel the anxiety really really early we will always be feeling anxiety because there will always be something somewhat uncertain there'll always be a future event there'll always be something we don't like so the anxiety just really feeds on itself all right so what can help I am going to go through five tips but I just want to say they are all interrelated they all go together working with them as a whole will be the most helpful for you so the number one tip involves the first word anticipatory always reminding yourself that what you're imagining is not actually happening now it's anticipating something now I know anxiety convinces us fully that this horrible thing is going to happen or a horrible result will come or that the chances are high enough that something horrible will happen so that we should be worrying but this is your anxiety talking this is a falsehood it's actually not true the anxiety response that you're having we've already talked about is not congruent with the situation it's an excessive response right but your anxiety is going to really try to convince you of this but continually bringing in this concept that this is anticipatory it's not happening now and that helps to create distance from your thoughts I talk in a lot of my videos about the Observer mind which is an excellent thing to develop it's the part of our mind that takes a step back looks at our thoughts and then decides do we want to go with this or not gives us more distance more perspective and more agency so labeling it anticipatory second tip is mindfulness now this goes with anticipatory because once we recognize this is not happening now we can bring our attention back back to the present moment whether it's through grounding techniques and I do have some videos on that or diaphragmatic breathing being aware of our feet on the floor looking around the room for three items that are blue three items that are red three items that are yellow those kind of exercises really ground Us in the present moment because anticipatory anxiety is almost the opposite of not being present well it is is the opposite not the only opposite but it's the opposite of being mindfully present if we're mindfully really aware with our senses then we can't be lost in the anticipatory anxiety so weaving mindfulness practices into your day on a regular basis very very helpful and these practices aren't going to Boom solve this problem for you really quickly like it doesn't happen that way but the gradual process of bringing your mind back to the moment with sensory awareness right that's why I mentioned the like look for the three things right or bring your mind to what sounds you hear if you're quiet what smells are around you any kind of sensory experience helps to ground you in the present moment and before I move on to tip number three I do want to mention I have a free webinar called rewire your brain for joy and confidence and it's all about using these kind of tools to rewire the pathways right because if we have automatic anticipatory anxiety or automatic fear of an event or fear of an item or an object or anything if we have these automatic responses we're creating super highways in our brain the synapses get melinated together it actually is is a super highway those get used to talking to one another and they do it super fast before you can intervene so the matter of retraining your brain really means bringing in some of these practices regularly anyway a lot of people find that webinar really really helpful I will put the link to it in the description to this video I'll show it here on the screen and you can also find it on my website which is awak andjoy dolie www. aake enjoy. lifee okay tip number three which ties into that number two as well as the number one number three are the sematic methods of calming yourself because if your body is having that physical response to the anxiety right we talked about that earlier just it kicks in so fast using your frontal lobe to say okay that is not the appropriate response because this is anticipatory I'm going to bring my mind back to the moment and then I'm going to use physically calming techniques diaphragmatic breathing petting an animal walking in nature listening to the birds anything that really helps you physiologically lower that blood pressure lower your pulse rate relax those muscles progressive muscle relaxation excellent technique all right tip number four the movie technique so with the anticipatory anxiety we talked about how your brain is creating a story and it is pretty catastrophic probably or at least really not good let's see if you can come up with a different story can you come up with a different ending your inclination is probably to create a really positive ending but then your brain's going to kick in and be like yeah no that's never going to happen never going to happen to me I'm never lucky always this XYZ or I'm not good enough or I don't deserve that or whatever the self-criticism tiid that goes on is going to kick in if we make that ending too good so let's find a neutral ending like with most movies we watch or books we read novels right like the character some good things happen and then some not so good things happen and then good things and then not so good things and you always want your book to end when the good things are happening doesn't always but that's what happens in life it goes up and down and very often things are neutral and the other thing that happens when things are neutral is that our brain gets a little bit bored we would never watch a movie where everything was neutral where nothing bad happened to the main character we wouldn't right we would be too bored so just be careful that your brain is not like avoiding the boredom of a neutral ending here by creating a catastrophic one which is causing all sorts of other problems now the movie technique can be used even more extensively where you actually picture seeing a movie like sitting on your couch or in the movie theater watching a movie of a character that looks like you but isn't you going through the same kind of worries and concerns that you're going through and that can really help you feel compassion for the character because you know what human life is hard we have to deal with a lot of hard things uncomfortable things there's a lot of uncertainty there's things we want to control we can't control right there's all sorts of stuff so when you see it as a movie you're more likely to have compassion for the character and then you can try to bring that compassion towards yourself and self-compassion has actually been shown to help lower anxiety all right my tip number five you're really not going to like this one I know is meditation right now people with a lot of anxiety have a hard time meditating and they'll say I can't meditate I can't meditate I think I have a video called I can't meditate I'll link it at the end but you can meditate it's really about increasing your tolerance right to that boredom I mentioned increasing your ability to continually bring your attention back to the present moment and when I say medit I want to clarify something here a lot of people use the guided meditations very very useful they really are but I see the guided meditations more in the category of my tip number three of the somatically relaxing techniques guided meditations help you feel calmer they guide you they help you really physiologically relax pure mindfulness meditation where you sit let's say for 10 minutes in silence staring at a spot on the floor or with your eyes closed and you continually try to bring your attention back to the present moment where not much is happening this is hard but it really is a super way to develop that Observer mind it dramatically increases your ability to stay present your ability to be aware of your thoughts when I started meditating yeah it was wild right I just really began to be like oh there's my themes wow there's that old theme coming back up again but I could see things so much clearer and that ability to begin to differentiate between the fantasy that is happening up here with our stories and what's actually happening is really the key to overcoming anticipatory anxiety almost completely like we'll always have a little bit of anxiety and you know some can be helpful or useful small amount helps you focus helps you be productive right like definitely sometimes I like cut things short because having that little pressure of time really kind of kicks that in for me but in an Adaptive way right if it's within reason but meditation really really helps to cut out the excessive anticipatory anx Society so I'd love to know what you think about this if you have other tools and techniques that you use that you find useful please share them below it's great for the community if you have any questions you want me to elaborate on something let me know in the comments sometimes I do videos because of the comments I get I'll link some other videos here at the end that I think will be useful for you and I hope I see you at the webinar take care

Channel: Barbara Heffernan

Views: 19,004

Keywords: barbara heffernan, @awakenjoy.life, Anticipatory anxiety, anxiety help, anxiety tips, anxiety disorder, help with anxiety, anxiety recovery, how to help anxiety, worrying about the future, anticipatory anxiety relief, how to stop worrying, worry about things, nervous about the future, anticipatory anxiety cycle, help for anticipatory anxiety

Id: ry_lWvkuAqU

Length: 17min 53sec (1073 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 06 2024