Living with anxiety is an awful experience for anyone. Understandably, those that experience anxiety simply want to not be anxious. We look for solutions to take that anxiety away.

We look for coping strategies, pharmaceutical solutions, and possibly even patterns of behaviour that can change our emotional state; even temporarily. This could be procrastination, food, alcohol, sex, substances, gambling, amongst many other things.

Instead of understanding our anxiety; we want to get rid of it. Understandably so.

My opinion is this, that if we understand why we are experiencing anxiety, then we give ourselves the best chance of doing something about it and changing permanently, to live a happier, more content, and inner-peaceful life. 

Anxiety is a psychological and physiological condition that has developed as a result of an individual's experience over the course of their lifetime in response to incredibly wide set of events.  This can include - from their environment, relationships, and physical health.  

Understanding how and why this has happened will help you to manage your experience of anxiety.  

“What about acceptance? I don’t want to accept that I have anxiety! I want to do something about it!!”

The next thing that I fundamentally believe about anxiety (and any mental health condition or presentation, or addiction, or pattern of behaviour) is this:-

There is always a reason why. This is what I mean about acceptance.

There is always a reason why someone is experiencing anxiety.

Commonly, the thoughts that someone experiencing anxiety will be in following groups, I have given some examples from my own experiences - both professionally and personally.  

Self concept - they don’t know “who” they are, they don’t have a strong sense of themselves, or the things they like or want from their life.  Often, there can be a sense of inner conflict and they might say something along the lines of "there is part of me that feels like this, and another part of me that feels completely different"

Relationships - in their relationships they feel that they can’t say “no”, they must keep people happy, and they must avoid nearly all forms of conflict.  However, from time-to-time everything can become too much and they may either erupt with an emotional outburst or become incredibly withdrawn.  This can possibly lead to depression and may engage in other self-soothing/self-medicating behaviours like, alcohol, food, substances, or sexual behaviours etc. 

Values - people with anxiety can often experience thoughts and feelings of not being good enough, needing to be a certain way or perfect, being weak, and needing to conceal this.  Individuals often describe this as not having much self-confidence, but can find themselves in certain situations, interactions, or with certain people and feel completely "ok" and largely anxiety-free.  This can often lead to confusion and frustration. 

Meaning - People experiencing anxiety can also make deep meaning from interactions with others about how that other person may be thinking about them, these thoughts will most likely be incredibly negative.  It is possible for someone living with anxiety to shape-shift and morph into different versions of themselves in order to feel like that they are pleasing the people around them; even though this may be at-odds with who they are deep down.  This presents many challenges as they may not have a strong sense of who they actually are, as noted above.  

Needs - all human have a range of needs, basic physical needs - like food, water, shelter etc. We also have a wider range of emotional, psychological, relationship, and life-purpose needs. For example, the need to be seen, heard, understood and accepted as-they-are. It is common for those experiencing anxiety to not have a clear sense of those needs and how to meet them. This can result in a sense of needing to control things or perhaps even a sense of not having any power or autonomy in many situations.

Life experiences - who we are forms over the course of our lifetime, from before we are even born. Our personality and our mental health is shaped by our experiences. When we have faced adversity and challenges in our life, particularly in childhood, our brain and our psychology “records” this and forms around it. Our anxiety is very regularly the brain and body’s way of alerting us to similar events playing out in our lives again. Often, the connection is abstract, nuanced, perhaps even tenuous - but there is almost certainly a connection to something that has happened before.

It could be, “growing up, I didn’t feel I was good enough. Nothing “that bad” happened; it was just a feeling I had. I guess I still feel that way now.”

In process of learning about anxiety, specifically our own experience of anxiety and how & why we might be experiencing anxiety now; we can become more accepting, more kind to ourselves, develop a better relationship to ourself, and healthier relationships with those around us.      

Anxiety is psychological, physiological and emotional experience. Our immediate environment and all of our relationships, our work, and socioeconomic status are all factors in our own individual and unique journey with anxiety.

In this course, we will explore the most up-to-date peer-reviewed scientific and psychological studies on anxiety, it’s causes, it’s treatments.

It is far more complicated than simply being deficient in one or two brain chemicals or genetically predisposed to “getting” anxiety.  Although, these may also be factors, there is much more to it than simply these things. 

I believe that the way out of anxiety is through it, rather than simply wanting to not being anxious. Therefore, in order to change we must first understand it.

No one can do this for us. We must do it for ourselves. I can help, by sharing with you the tools that I have used and developed for myself and for my clients.

If you are ready to start that work, I invite you to register your interest below.