hey there everybody and welcome to this video on what
causes anxiety i'm your host dr donnelly snipes
in this short video we're going to talk about the function of anxiety
the connection between anxiety and the stress response
or the hpa axis and the impact of anxiety on perception schema and problem solving
anxiety is triggered by the threat of loss and that can be the loss of a life whether it is
the loss of your life or you're worried that somebody else is in danger or even a pet it
can be triggered by the loss of dreams or hope if you had always dreamed of something
happening and it looks like that's not going to happen or if you look towards the future and
what you would always envisioned as your future is not going to come to pass
you could feel anxious about that a loss of meaning or understanding can also trigger anxiety
when the world goes topsy-turvy and you can't figure out okay what happened how do i
anticipate what's going on that can trigger anxiety the loss of relationships whether
it is your self-esteem or relationships with other people can trigger anxiety
as well as the loss of control as humans we like to have some element of control over our lives
and when there's a big unknown out there or when we face a direct threat of loss of control we face
a direct threat that somebody is going to tell us what we have to do it can trigger anger or anxiety
sometimes we feel anxious when we are worried about a loss of status because of a failure if
you fail a project or if you fail a test it could mean that you lose status your grade goes down or
maybe you lose status from being the valedictorian down to not being the valedictorian anymore
and stuff and i put this one on here because sometimes it does trigger feelings of anxiety
if you're worried that you're going to lose stuff uh if that stuff is important to you
it can trigger anxiety whether it's important to you because it has
memories that you cherish or it's important to you because it is part of your identity
the threat of the loss of stuff can promote anxiety in a lot of people but what is
anxiety anxiety is really a lot more simple than people make it out to be it's an emotion
that's designed to motivate you to action it's part of the fight-or-flight response
when your brain thinks that there might be a problem just like a smoke alarm
when there might be a problem it goes off and it dumps a bunch of energy into your system
so you have the ability to get up and see if there's a problem just because it is triggered
just because you feel anxious doesn't mean there's necessarily a threat your body is giving you the
energy to get up and evaluate if there is a threat and then if there is the ability to flee from it
an example you hear a strange sound at night and you get anxious or frightened
i know when i'm staying home alone we live out in the country
and and we don't have a lot of neighbors nearby so it can be a little bit anxiety provoking if
i hear a weird noise outside when that happens do you hide under the covers and just worry about it
if so how helpful is that then you become more hyper vigilant and you probably start hearing
every other sound and you start hearing creaks and what have you and your anxiety just continues to
intensify and continues to spiral and the interesting thing is that's your
body continuing to dump glutamate and energy and things in an effort to try to motivate you to hey
get up and see if there's a problem so if there is we can get the heck out of here
the more helpful response is to use that energy when you feel anxious
to evaluate if it's a problem in this context at this time or in this case just a raccoon
what can you do you can sit there you hear this noise you can go through use that energy to go
through the possibilities in your mind it could be a raccoon it could be the dog oh my roommate
just got home that that could be the noise that i heard so that's part of it you can
evaluate the possibilities and if that quells your anxiety if you hit on that aha and you're like
that's what it was okay you know end of story you're done and you can start to relax again
if you go through the possibilities or maybe you don't you hear that noise and you're like
i need to check it check it out to see if there's a problem okay so you're using your
energy to get up and check it out or if you're like me you call a friend and you're talking
to your friend while you're getting up to check it out because you don't want to do it by yourself
but if you're home alone you got to figure out how to make that work
other examples that trigger anxiety for people maybe their significant other or their best friend
is just acting weird so they're concerned that that person is angry with them they're fearing
abandonment they're fearing rejection they don't know what's going on there's just this unsettled
feeling in the pit of their stomach maybe it's not overwhelming anxiety but it is annoying feeling
or and my least favorite one if your boss summons you to their office you know we need to talk
that always stresses me out with my other boss with the boss that i worked with for 14 years
most of the time if he called you into his office there was a problem
he was sort of a no news is good news kind of guy so when he would summon you to his office
it was probably not going to be a pleasant situation so whenever future bosses summon
me to their office i recall those past experiences and automatically it triggers my anxiety because
of the unknown i don't know what might be going on but my past experiences in similar situations
have been unpleasant now it's important and we're going to talk about this more in a minute to use
the current context at this time in this context at this time with this boss does that necessarily
mean that there's a problem future bosses may call you into their office because they have a project
or something they want you to do and it may not be a no news is good news sort of situation
so anxiety is worry is fear whatever word you want to put on it it's a response to a perceived
threat or stressor when your body thinks that there's a stressor and and remember i said it's
like the smoke alarm it doesn't mean there is one it means there might be one just like the
smoke alarm goes off when there's smoke doesn't necessarily mean there's a fire
cortisol your stress hormone is dumped glutamate one of your main excitatory hormones
is neurotransmitters is dumped when cortisol and glutamate are coursing through your system
you are in fight or flight mode a lot of times you have what we call tunnel vision you're not
designed to be using higher order reasoning and thinking at this point in time you were
supposed to be evaluating if there's a threat and if so getting the heck out of there so your
thinking is going to be somewhat impaired and often somewhat rigid you're not often when you're
in an anxiety state when you're in an anxious state you're often not going to see all of your
options because your brain is just saying not time to think just get me to safety
norepinephrine and dopamine are also secreted and i know you may think of dopamine as the pleasure
chemical but it's really your perseverance chemical so your body dumps norepinephrine to help
you stay focused on the task at hand and dopamine to keep you wanting to move away from the threat
your body also dumps blood sugar and fatty acids so if you've got diabetes
this is not a good thing because all of a sudden your blood sugar is going way up
but blood sugar is designed for the short fight just like when you eat sugar sugar you can have
a spike and then a crash blood sugar doesn't last for long the fatty acids are released
from your liver for the long fight in case there is a problem you've got this reserve energy this
highly dense energy that you can pull from for the marathon if it's not just a quick sprint
the stress response unfortunately often leads to emotional reasoning
and memories of other similar situations when you have that stress response you feel anxious
and a lot of people have always reacted this way when they feel anxious they think i fear therefore
i am in danger and i'm kind of modifying descartes statement but it's important to recognize that
emotional reasoning is not fact-based reasoning i fear therefore there might be a problem is a
more effective statement however if you've always grown up thinking i'm scared therefore there must
be something to be scared about guess what you're gonna find something to be scared about you're
going to see the threats in the environment well all of that gets encoded and every time
that happens you encode more and every time that happens after that you call on those emotion-based
schema those emotion-based expectations for what's going to happen instead of fact-based ones
therefore in addressing anxiety one of the most important things is to be able to recognize the
feeling for what it is it's designed to get you to move to take action to see if there is a threat
and then use facts in the present context to see if there is a threat and if so what to do about it
what is the impact of anxiety i already mentioned that anxiety when you're in that fight-or-flight
state it's going to impact your ability to think clearly but let's go through all of the things
when people are anxious the gastrointestinal system is not in rest and digest
it is in fight or fleet so the body says hey let's get rid of some of that stuff so everything speeds
up which is why a lot of people get stomach cramps or gi distress we'll say when they get anxious
unfortunately when that happens you're also not making use of the food that you've eaten or at
least not nearly as efficiently because it's not getting digested and processed effectively
when people experience anxiety they experience increases in muscle tension which can
create increases in pain they may also experience increases in pain because of changes
in neurotransmitter levels when people are anxious especially if they're persistently anxious not
just i had an anxiety moment during the day but if they're anxious a lot of the time it often keeps
them from being able to effectively wind down and go to sleep it keeps their cortisol levels high
which disrupts their circadian rhythms and alters the levels of hormones and
neurotransmitters so they don't get good sleep which contributes to low energy and fatigue
but just being stressed out and tense all the time also drains your energy
and when people are anxious they are what we call hyper vigilant they're
more easily startled and think about how much energy it takes when you're startled
you know you have that rush all of a sudden and it can be exhausting when you are constantly scanning
you have difficulty relaxing and you're startling a whole lot more throughout the day
affectively or emotionally people with anxiety tend to be more irritable and it makes sense if
you're worried if you are in a state where you feel like there's a threat going on if
you feel out of control then it's more likely that you are going to respond with irritability
to other things that come your way because you're already feeling threatened and you're like i
can't deal with anything else depression is not uncommon in people with anxiety because you can
only be anxious for so long before you run out of gas before you're you've gone so long without
good sleep before your energy has been so far drained that you just become hopeless and helpless
people also feel guilt when they feel anxious they may feel guilty that they are anxious and
not able to do the things they want to do the way they want to do them they may experience anger
and resentment at other people for quote making them anxious you know you didn't
call when you said you would that triggered my anxiety therefore i'm angry with you
cognitively it promotes a sense of pessimism and negativity when you're anxious when you're in
fight or flight your brain is pre-programmed to notice the threats in the environment
and not pay attention to the positive things so you tend to get a more skewed perspective of the
world which promotes pessimism your memory is often impaired thanks to that glutamate
your brain actually does not encode memories nearly as effectively in the moment and then
because you're not getting good quality sleep you're not going through those phases of sleep
where your memories get effectively encoded into your into your brain problem solving and decision
making also go out the window when you're anxious the more anxious you are the more difficult it is
often to see the options for problem solving and to make a decision because you're second
guessing you become anxious about what's the right decision so anxiety promotes anxiety
interpersonally in your relationships anxiety often impacts your self-esteem because you
don't want to be anxious all the time and you get frustrated or you fear rejection and you
create a lot of negative self-statements it can result in impatience with other people
because you don't have enough energy to deal with your own anxiety right now you can't
break free from your own anxiety right now you ain't got enough time or energy for their drama
you may experience isolation sometimes by choice because you just can't tolerate any more input
you're already overwhelmed or not by choice because other people get exhausted being around
your anxiety so they start to distance themselves because they don't know how to help you but
they also can't seem to figure out how to connect with you in a meaningful way
and finally you may have an inability to create secure attachments when you're anxious it's
really hard to be emotionally available to other people and that is so necessary for creating
secure attachments to be able to empathize to be able to respond consistently to their needs
and not just be completely overwhelmed trying to figure out how to manage your own needs
anxiety is a motion that's designed to move you to action
it's not like wine it does not get better with age the longer you hold it anxiety is based
on your belief about whether there's a threat based on prior experiences but it's important
to remember to evaluate whether the situation is a threat in this context at this time
if there is a threat use the energy that's being dumped into your system to address it
otherwise your body is going to continue to dump energy until you're just plumb out of
gas and that will end up leading to feelings of hopelessness helplessness and depression