Stopping yourself feeling anxious is, in theory, straightforward. There is a trigger, a feeling of anxiety and worry, and then potentially a subsequent behaviour. In reality though, it can be difficult to simply “switch it off” and “not worry about it”.
Context: This article talks about ongoing anxiety created through trauma. That trauma could be abandonment, betrayal, death, or the loss or change of something important. It does not talk about physiological or genetic factors.
What is the role of anxiety?
Anxiety has an important role in our lives. It’s information from our nervous system, a warning to encourage action that will keep us safe. It can be a sense of danger and risk, a heavy ache in your stomach, the closing in of your shoulders and bowing of your head. But it’s important to remember that anxiety is a warning, not necessarily evidence that you’re in danger.
The problem is that as we go through life we accumulate experiences of things that go wrong, and the actions of others that lead to pain. So it’s natural that your awareness of risk increases, and your warning mechanism kicks in more often.
One of the difficult parts of anxiety and worry is that you can feel it even when logically you know you’re off-balance and the risk is low to non-existent. So simply wanting to stop feeling anxious isn’t enough to get rid of it.
So, what can you do to stop feeling anxious?
Step 1: Understand what you’re anxious about
As a first step, it’s wise to consider why you feel anxious in the first place, because changing your brain pattern can be easier when you understand the root cause. Maybe you were abandoned as a child, your partner cheated on you, you got made redundant or you lost a loved one.
Getting to the root cause means you can take any required action to fix a current situation e.g. mend a relationship; learn from the experience e.g. create better boundaries going forward; and simply come to terms with it e.g. that the person you love isn’t around anymore. If you don’t consider these things, you risk ignoring the underlying issue and finding yourself in a constant battle with the anxiety.
There are a number of ways you can come to terms with your trauma. Speak with friends and family, get professional help, write about your worries and simply spend time with yourself. If you need urgent help, please take the step to get support.
Understanding and coming to terms with your pain can take months or even years. But you don’t have to wait until you’re fully at peace with it to start recalibrating your brain and changing your brain pattern. You can work on both at the same time.
By choosing to change your patterns, you’re effectively saying, I’ve learnt from this experience, I’ve considered what I can change or take action on, and I don’t want what happened in the past to keep shaping how I feel today. I now want to move on.
The challenge is that your anxious brain pattern can be triggered even when you’re at peace with what happened.
Step 2: Remove your anxiety triggers
Next you can focus on identifying your known triggers and deciding what to do about them. Sometimes that means removing the trigger, essentially removing the first step in your brain pattern and stopping the feeling of anxiety that follows.
It may take some time to identify all your triggers e.g. photos around your house, posts on your social profiles, behaviours of toxic people in your life, and even your surroundings. Have a little note on your phone and when you feel the anxiety, jot the trigger down.
You can then work on removing triggers that aren’t helpful. For example, that could be changing your thoughts (actively thinking of something else), stopping looking at social media, changing who you spend your time with, moving home or finding a new job.
But there’s an important distinction between removing something that’s genuinely harmful to you and avoiding something simply because it makes you anxious. Avoiding situations that are actually safe can reinforce your anxiety, teaching your brain that there really is something to fear.
Step 3: Repeat
Recalibrating your brain patterns takes repetition. Even when you understand why you feel the way you do and you’ve removed as many triggers as you can, there may be times when your brain pattern is triggered. So you need a little plan, basically what you want your new pattern to be from the point of being triggered.
Write down your triggers (even the ones you’ve removed from your environment), then what you want to do next when they happen e.g. think about something else, listen to some music, phone a friend and ask how they are.
Sometimes your new pattern can be as simple as recognising the anxiety without reacting to it. For example, your partner seems quieter than usual and you start to worry something is wrong. Rather than repeatedly asking if everything is OK, you recognise that your anxiety has been triggered, remind yourself that you have no actual evidence something is wrong, and allow the feeling to pass without taking action.
Refine and repeat your new pattern as many times as you need.
The aim isn’t necessarily to remove every trigger or stop feeling anxious altogether. It’s to recognise when the anxiety is helpful, when it isn’t, and to stop it automatically determining how you behave.