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.