My latest revelation (I say latest because they seem to be coming thick and fast these days) came after reading a book on anxiety. It just so happens that the book was for children.
My son has been struggling a little lately and I wanted to help him in a way that was meaningful at his age. What I didn’t expect was the book would have a profound impact on me and subsequently some of my clients.
New understanding of anxiety
It explains anxiety in a way I hadn’t considered fully. I understand our innate stress response, but I had always considered anxiety as a bully, something to overcome, to conquer. Many adult books on anxiety do this. It sounds powerful “How to tell anxiety to sod off”, “F@!k Off Anxiety” and “Untangle your anxiety” to name a few.
What I now believe is anxiety is your friend, you can work with it, partner with it to understand worry as it is relevant to you.
The amygdala
Here’s the analogy. Our amygdala is a small collection of cells thought to be responsible for processing emotions and memories connected with fear. I like to call it Bob. Bob alerts us to danger, threat or risk. Here’s the thing though, Bob doesn’t know the difference between physical, emotional, psychological or perceived threat. Bob will activate regardless. Bob is like a smoke alarm. A smoke alarm will sound whether you have burnt the toast or whether your kitchen is on fire. Bob is trying so hard to alert you to threat that sometimes he gets a bit over excited and because you keep responding to it, he keeps alerting you to more.
How to make friends with anxiety
We need to treat Bob like our BFF. Thank him for alerting us when it really matters, but also remind him when the kitchen is not on fire.
To do this we need to be grounded in reality. When Bob is active he can confuse our mind and we can easily overreact because we are alarmed, we are in auto pilot. Here are some tips:
- Start assessing the reality of each situation or circumstance that is worrying you. It maybe that some of them are “real” and an actual issue, but it’s also likely that some situations are not.
- Name your amygdala – have an internal conversation with it to say “Thanks but no thanks” you don’t need it’s protection for this particular situation. You are then retraining your amygdala to assess what is real threat and what is “burnt toast”.
- Have a worry “time” it might be an hour, or it could be 10 minutes a day. Instead of letting those worries overcome you throughout the day, tell yourself that you will move them to your worry time. It will free your energy to live and focus on other things, then you can deal with the worries during your allocated time.
Believe it or not you are in control, it may not seem like it but with practice, you can be friends with Bob and train Bob to see the reality of life’s natural ups and downs.
Try it today and see how many of your worries are simply “burnt toast”.
Kirsty Ritchie
