I made a video a while back titled
rewiring the anxious brain. and it's all about how we accidentally train our
brain to be more anxious through avoidance and how we can train our brain
to be less anxious by facing our fears. and I used the fear of dogs as an
example in that video. and in response to that video I got a lot of questions the
most common were "What do I do if I don't know why I'm anxious?", number two is what
if the dog bites you, and number three was I'm not afraid of dogs I'm afraid of
people. what do I do about that and in the next couple of videos over the next
couple of weeks I'm gonna answer all of those questions, but in this video we're
gonna talk about what do you do if you don't know why you're anxious. so let's troubleshoot that together I
don't know why you're anxious but I've got some pretty good guesses there are
some really common reasons why you might be feeling anxiety but you don't know
why and if we can figure it out then you can work to change your patterns around
your anxiety and your brain can retrain and rewire to be more calm. In this video
I'm going to walk you through six reasons why you might be anxious and you
don't know why and I'll show you some basic steps to take to start healing.
Contrary to popular understanding disordered anxiety is not a permanent
genetic trait it's treatable and in my experience most anxiety can either be
reduced or adapted to in a way that makes life so much easier when you learn
the right skills you really can feel calmer and happier. if you want to learn
how to get better at feeling and how to deal with intense emotions or improve
your general mental health check out my online courses in my course to change
your brain I teach the basics of neuroplasticity which is how your brain
is built to rewire itself all the time. and you'll also learn 10 natural
research fact treatments to improve mental health. in my coping skills and
self-care course I teach you how to soothe intense emotions and to create a
sustainable self-care practice to deal with emotions in a healthy way. so the
links are all in the description and if you use the code nutshell you'll get 25%
off. ok so let's jump into figuring out why
you're anxious and what to do about it. so the first reason why you might be
feeling anxious but you don't know why is micro threats in our environment so
remember anxiety is the fight flight freeze response it's this physiological
reaction and it pumps adrenaline into your body to prepare you to fight off a
tiger or run away from an elephant or hide from a predator, but the fight
flight freeze response isn't just triggered by huge predators
it also will kick in in response to tiny little perceived threats and our modern
environment has a lot of these. so for example traffic driving is actually
somewhat dangerous and our brain responds to traffic with an anxiety
response our brain also treats late as a survival threat noise can
trigger the fight flight freeze response and so can school or work assignments
our brain perceives our job as essential for survival because that's where our
food and our shelter comes from and we all have this beautiful brilliant
anciently evolved brain and it triggers this physical response in reaction to
mental challenges but our anciently evolved brain isn't as well adapted to
modern stressors as it is to ancient ones. So things like multitasking and
social interactions with hundreds of strangers everyday these are things that
turn on that danger response in our brain when unresolved all these little
threats build up over time and they then we feel anxious but we can't pinpoint it
so this might leave you feeling a little bit restless, jumpy, or irritable. it might
make you feel achy, or jittery, easily triggered, or overwhelmed, or you might
have physical symptoms like headaches, or stomachaches, or muscle tension. So to
understand how to fix this we really need to go back to the anxiety cycle for
a minute so when our brain perceives something as dangerous it perceives a
threat it's going to turn on the fight flight freeze response. and this is what
anxiety feels like it's that sweating hands, it's the fast heart rate, it's that
adrenaline, and this response happens faster than we can think this is
something that happens deep in our brains and it's not something that we
can consciously control. we can't just make this go away by trying not to have
it so this is the anxiety response and the fight flight freeze response is
meant to protect us from danger. but if we want to overcome disordered anxiety
we really need to learn how this works. so we start by asking ourselves the
question is this actually dangerous? there's a lot of things that turn on
this fight flight freeze response that aren't actually dangerous this might be
something like you know your husband startling you or public speaking or you
know your friend's dog who's actually sweet.
so when the answer is no then if we just stick with it we don't avoid we don't
escape we breathe we calm down our body then you have this natural ability to
return to calm. right our brain doesn't have this built-in fight flight freeze
response without an antidote and this is the parasympathetic nervous system right
so this helps us return to calm and you know normally this just naturally
happens we return to calm right and that's our goal because when we're calm
we're able to make good choices, we're able to live the life that we want, to
and we don't make stupid decisions, we don't feel anxious all the time now.
however if we have something that's not actually dangerous so going back to my
rewiring the anxious brain if we use the example of a dog right so your friend
has a dog and it's a nice dog but you're scared of dogs it made you feel anxious
you have this fight flight freeze response and you choose instead of
sticking with it to avoid it then your brain does this like whew the reason I
survived is because I escaped and so your brains like I want to survive again
so I'm gonna make my human more anxious next time
and that avoidance is going to trigger that short-term relief. which leads to
more anxiety in the future and that's what causes this anxiety cycle to spiral.
So avoidance is something that makes your anxiety worse. better option is
stick with it, breathe, face it right and that's gonna help you return it to calm.
now if we go back to this and we ask the question is this actually dangerous?
right go up here and we say the answer. is yes okay that's fine it's okay if
there's danger in our lives because there is the fight flight freeze
response has us ask a question right do I take action? do I fight it off? do I run
away? do I hold still and freeze? do I put my head down
and try to you know not make any noise so that I can survive this? so the one of
the options if this is actually dangerous is to do something right so if
you've got a dangerous dog then you can choose to avoid, it or if you've got a
dangerous dog around here you can choose to call it animal control, or if you've
got a dangerous dog around you you can just freeze, and hopefully you won't
trigger that dog and the dog will wander off right. So once we take action we do
something then our body has a way to release that adrenaline and a lot of
times it's through shaking, or laughing, or you know some kind of physical big
movement. So we literally shake it off and when we do that we return it to calm
so that's a perfectly reasonable choice of action now sometimes there are things
we can't control there's some some situations that make us anxious or that
are threatening that we can't do anything about. So we get to this
actually dangerous and there's nothing we can do about it.
so in that situation we have some tools we can use. we can choose to use skills
like willingness and acceptance to help our body return to calm and at the very
least when we're using active acceptance when we're making the choice to actively
accept that this is dangerous but there's nothing I can do about it at the
very least we aren't escaping and avoiding this and causing our anxiety to
spiral so we're not making ourselves feel worse. So we've got option A which
is no this is not dangerous then we should face it and we're gonna
return to calm if we say yes it is actually dangerous then we take action
and shake it off and return to calm. The biggest problem that we face when people
don't know why they're anxious is this right here.
I don't know right so you have three choices here yes, no, and I don't know. So
if we power brain perceives a threat we have this fight flight freeze response
and then we immediately avoid it or you're just too busy to work through
your emotions or we distract ourselves so that we feel it then our brain just
stays stuck in this anxiety response and your brains
gonna keep prompting you over and over again to ask this question is this
actually dangerous and if you go to the I don't know place then it's like well I
guess I'll make my human ask that question again and we'll bring on that
fight flight freeze response over and over again because this is just your
brain trying to get you to answer this question is this actually dangerous?
should I do something about? it should I accept it? or should I face it? The more
you distract yourself the more you feel anxious but you don't know why and
that's another way we get stuck in the anxiety cycle so when there's a micro
threat like a brain sees something like traffic or noise or public speaking as a
threat it's going to turn on that anxiety response and if we ignore it
suppress it or just distract ourselves from it then that anxiety is going to
continue to spiral. But if we face it and we ask this question and we answer it
with either yes or no and then we choose the right action here so if it is
dangerous we face it we survive and then we return to calm or we choose to sit
with it and accept it and practice our willingness skills and return to calm.
then um you know we're able to get out of the anxiety cycle its when we're
stuck in distraction and avoidance mode. that that fight flight freeze response
that anxiety response continues to cycle over and over again. however when it
comes to anxiety and these perceived threats and our choice whether we run, or
we escape, or we sit with it. we actually have room for choice we can choose
actions that decrease anxiety Viktor Frankl said "between stimulus and
response there is a space and in that space is our power to choose our
response in our response lies our growth and our freedom" so just because there
are micro threats in the environment doesn't mean that you're doomed to
experience anxiety forever or at least not disordered anxiety. So there's
something we can do to make it so that we can process through and resolve each
of those threats return to calm and decrease our overall general anxiety and
there's a reason why a lot of people right now are feeling more anxiety than
in the past and that's reason number two. so this is the second and most common
reason why people feel anxious but they don't know why and it's because they're
habitually avoidant. We are just too good at escaping when you feel anxious and
you immediately try to make it go away this is what keeps you stuck in anxiety
mode. So this looks like trying not to think about it it looks like trying to
feel happy all the time it looks like keeping busy you might
watch too much TV or spend too much time on social media or you might eat
something to make you feel better. so anything that you do to make that
feeling go away or to distract yourself from that anxiety it's going to keep you
stuck in avoidance mode and that's what keeps you stuck in anxiety. Carl Jung
said "what we resist persists embrace it and it will resolve" so check yourself
right now what are your distraction techniques are
you watching this video to make your anxiety go away now I will help you but
it's not through avoidance but through learning to face it so distraction is
causing so many people to have anxiety get trapped in their system instead of
distraction listen to your anxiety and see what it has to teach you pay
attention to your physical sensations. notice your thoughts without needing to
believe them. Anxiety is just a warning bell it's supposed to motivate us to
action it's supposed to help us resolve threats but if we're chronically,
avoidant if we're over busy, or over numb, or we have these habitual thinking
patterns that prevent us from resolving a problem then we're gonna be unable to
process through that micro threat. and resolve it and return to calm.
sometimes anxiety is a sign that something needs to change.
sometimes it's a sign that you just need to lean into your experience. when we
switch from distraction and not knowing to exploring our anxiety we give
ourselves more power to solve our problems and therefore reduce our
anxiety. so I want everyone to know that your brain and your body have this
natural ability to heal and we can do that by directly facing our problems and
we can also do that by letting our brain bring those problems from the back of
our mind to the front of our mind in quiet moments. and our brain is
naturally gonna work through them, but the reason a lot of people get stuck in
anxiety is because they keep themselves busy all the time and that might keep
you from feeling anxious in the short term but in the long run it's gonna make
you more anxious. So many people with anxiety they don't realize that they're
doing this but a sign that you might be doing this is if when you sit down if
you take five minutes and you do nothing if that makes you feel worse so if doing
nothing or slowing down makes you feel more anxious then distraction is
probably one of the contributing factors to your anxiety people keep themselves
busy they distract themselves but all those pressing worries don't go away
they stay there and because anxiety serves a function your brains not just
gonna let you avoid it so those worries and those sensations that you've been
avoiding that they keep popping up. in all the quiet moments especially in
times like when you're trying to go to sleep, or when you're trying to relax.
another situation that might happen for some people is they're so good at kind
of suppressing or distracting themselves from those anxiety messages that your
brain has to basically bring your anxiety to a shouting level to get you
to listen and that's gonna look like a panic attack. okay so what's the solution
when distraction is causing you to feel anxious you're not gonna know what's
causing it if you want to resolve your anxiety instead of speeding up you've
got to slow down so Dieter Uchtdorf who was an airline pilot he shares the
analogy of an airplane going through turbulence and when you're going through
something bumpy or rough or uncomfortable the tendency is to get
over with it as fast as possible to get out of that uncomfortable bouncing and
bumping but if the if the airplane pilot speeds up it makes the bouncing and
bumping worse and people actually might get injured on the plane bouncing around.
if instead of speeding up the pilot slows down then they can roll through
that storm much more gently and safely and get to their destination in one
piece so I'm going to encourage you to start a new habit. when you notice
yourself feeling anxious instead of jumping to mindless distraction, or
avoidance, instead of looking to your phone,
or some other device just take a minute to write about it. write about what
you're feeling and what's going on for you you could write about this in a
notebook you could use your phone but be really careful because phones are really
impressive distractions and whatever you do though where you choose to write
about it you sit with your feelings and you take the time to process your
thoughts so notice a name what you're going through and then clarify am I
actually in danger? is there some action to take? or you can ask a question is
this a time to let things go to accept? and to practice coping or grounding or
relaxation techniques another thing you can do to get a little bit more
awareness of where this anxiety is coming from is you can use an app to
track your mood maybe your anxiety tends to happen on Sunday nights like right
before a big week you start thinking about everything that's going on and
worrying about you know the upcoming tasks you have that week or your anxiety
might come up the week before your period or it might come up when you've
taken on too much at work, or you aren't getting enough sleep. So if you take the
time to write down what's going on and track it you might start to notice
patterns and find out what really is causing your anxiety. So if you don't
know why you're feeling anxious stop trying to escape because avoidance makes
you brain more anxious. turn off your distractions go for a
quiet walk rather than watching another show. for heaven's sake say on the toilet
without staring at your phone replace scrolling through your phone with
intentionally writing about your anxiety it's gonna feel more uncomfortable in
the short run I can almost guarantee that, but it will actually reduce your
anxiety over time you're gonna get better at feeling and your anxieties not
gonna bother you so much. okay so honestly I thought I could make
this into one video but it's getting too long so I'm gonna go into the next four
reasons of why you might be anxious but you don't know why in the next video
it's gonna be called rewiring the anxious brain part 4 and I'm gonna talk
about thinking patterns that you don't even know that you're doing that might
be making you anxious and I'm going to talk about another really positive
reason why you might be feeling anxious and you don't know why. but I've got to
save that for the next video so check out part 4 where we're going to talk
about general anxiety disorder. hopefully this video is coming out
couple of days so check out the link and thank you for watching and take care.
