What is Your Anxiety Protecting You From?
Years ago, I worked with a client who I’ll call Maria. Maria suffered from extreme anxiety, which manifested in racing thoughts, insomnia, ongoing bouts of panic, and regular gastrointestinal distress. We worked hard on helping Maria learn specific coping skills for her anxiety. For example,we incorporated various somatic practices with cognitive-based exercises, so she could transform her relationship with her mind/body and gain back control of her life. Maria would experience relief and a reduction of anxiety symptoms for short amounts of time; however, the anxiety would always come roaring back, causing Maria considerable distress. Now, many individuals experience anxiety, and it is certainly a part of modern life. Those with more pronounced anxiety struggles will often have reoccurring episodes or chronic anxiety for much of their life; there are genetic and environmental factors that all play into this. The key to anxiety “treatment” is that folks are able to navigate their symptoms successfully and access support in times of distress. The anxiety does not always “go away” per se, but the individual learns to relate to the experience much differently. The issue with Maria is that she just felt stuck. She would make progress, only to seemingly forget all that she had learned and gained in the recovery process. This is when we really began to focus on the underlying mechanisms of her anxiety. For many folks, anxiety serves as a secondary, protective emotion- one that shields an individual from deeper distress. So, the question for Maria, and for many of us who experience ongoing anxiety, became- what exactly is the anxiety protecting from?
Anxiety often acts as a buffer that keeps painful emotions or experiences at bay. By keeping you in a heightened state of vigilance or avoidance, anxiety serves as a way to protect you from confronting these uncomfortable feelings head-on. Understanding how anxiety functions in your life—specifically what it is keeping you from and how it is serving you—is a crucial step in the healing process.
What Are YOU Trying to Avoid?
So, let’s dive into some of the distressing emotions or experiences anxiety may be attempting to “block” for you:
Embarrassment: Fear of saying or doing the wrong thing and being judged by others.
Rejection: Avoiding situations where you could be dismissed, excluded, or unloved.
Shame: The painful belief that something is inherently wrong or unacceptable about you.
Failure: Fear about trying and not succeeding, which could lead to feelings of inadequacy.
Loss of control: Fear of chaos, unpredictability, or not being able to manage a situation.
Conflict: Avoiding disagreements or difficult conversations to prevent discomfort, hurt feelings, or possible rejection/abandonment.
Panic: Steering clear of situations that might trigger physical symptoms like a racing heart or shortness of breath, or feelings of being trapped/out of control/humiliated.
Vulnerability: Shying away from authentic connection or intimacy out of fear of being hurt or exposed.
When anxiety takes the wheel, it creates a false sense of safety by encouraging avoidance, withdrawal, or over-preparation. However, this comes at a cost: it limits your ability to engage fully with life and perpetuates the very discomfort it’s trying to protect you from.
How Is Anxiety Serving You?
Anxiety is often trying to meet a need, albeit in a way that’s counterproductive. For instance:
If you’re afraid of rejection, your anxiety might prompt you to avoid social situations altogether, protecting you from the risk of feeling unloved.
If embarrassment is your concern, anxiety might drive you to overanalyze every word or action, ensuring you don’t make a mistake.
If shame is the issue, anxiety might push you to strive for perfection, keeping you from revealing your true, imperfect self.
This protective role of anxiety makes it harder to let go. We definitely realized this rang true for Maria. She was particularly afraid of abandonment, due to experiencing profound emotional neglect as a child. We discovered the anxiety protected her from taking risks, feeling uncertain, and entering into interpersonal situations she could not fully control. In this sense, anxiety was serving to keep her “safe”. After all, it felt like a shield against any future emotional pain. But true healing comes not from avoiding these emotions, but from understanding and addressing the needs they represent.
Steps Toward Healing
Healing from anxiety involves peeling back the layers to uncover what lies beneath. Here’s how you can begin:
Identify the Avoidance: Take an honest look at the situations or emotions you’re avoiding. What triggers your anxiety? What outcomes are you most afraid of?
Explore the Deeper Need: Ask yourself what your anxiety is protecting you from. Is it trying to keep you safe from shame, failure, or rejection? Identify the underlying emotion and its corresponding need. See my free resource on this topic.
Validate Your Feelings: Acknowledge that the emotions you’re avoiding are valid and part of the human experience. You don’t have to shame yourself the avoidance (that will just makes matters worse!).
Practice Emotional Regulation: Learn tools to manage strong emotions, such as deep breathing, mindfulness, or grounding exercises. These can help you stay present and less reactive.
Reframe Your Thinking, When Helpful: Challenge the beliefs driving your deeper emotions, when appropriate. For example, if anxiety is protecting you from feelings of shame, is shame a justified emotion for you? Are you truly unworthy? These thoughts and feelings can be very difficult to change overnight, so start with small steps. I’ve had people say to me, “Yes, I truly do feel unworthy. I don’t think I’m very special or lovable at all.” In this case, we start right there and try to make a “one-degree” shift- what would be a new way of thinking that does feel accessible, or that is slightly more compassionate? For example- that individual might practice saying: “Those are the messages I received growing up; I get to choose how I want to feel about myself moving forward.” Over time, we keep dialing up the compassion and challenging the thoughts more and more.
Meet Your Needs Directly: Instead of letting anxiety control you, look for ways to address your deeper needs. If you fear rejection, work on building self-acceptance. If shame is holding you back, seek environments where vulnerability is met with compassion. If you fear sadness or anger, find new ways to either comfort or soothe yourself or to release pent up energy.
Seek Support: Healing isn’t a solo journey. Please reach out for support so you don’t have to go it alone.