Anxiety is a state in which you find it difficult to control your emotional responses to perceived threats. While your ‘flight or fight’ response is a natural response to stress or danger, when that response is out of proportion to the actual danger of the situation, or occurs when there is no danger present at all, you can be debilitated by its effects, rather than protected by them. Social anxiety disorder, for instance, is highly disabling, causing fear and avoidance of social situations. Health anxiety can cause you to live as if you had the serious health condition you fear you have.
We all experience some anxiety occasionally, and this is not classed as a disorder. However, 1 in 10 of us will experience a disabling anxiety disorder at some point in our lives, in which we are controlled by excessive and persistent anxiety. Regardless of whether your anxiety is a disorder or not, it can affect your choices in the moment, making you less resourceful in some cases as you are overcome by fear or worry. Imagine for instance not making that public speech, or not going out to that group meeting. For this reason, if you have anxiety, it’s important to know what causes it so that you can do something about it.
Symptoms of Anxiety
Common symptoms of anxiety include:
- feeling nervous or restless
- fear and worry
- panic attacks
- fast or irregular heartbeat
- shortness of breath
- trembling
- sweating
- difficulty focusing
- irritability
- tension
- tiredness and fatigue
- disturbed sleep
A panic attack or anxiety attack is a sudden intense response to your thoughts, emotions, and sensations, often with a feeling of impending doom, causing symptoms such as a racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, sweating, and trembling. Panic disorder is an anxiety disorder where you regularly have sudden attacks of panic.
What Causes Anxiety?
There are many triggers for anxiety:
- stressful thoughts and experiences
- past trauma
- poor parenting
- depression
- exhaustion
- perfectionism
- lifestyle change
- life-threatening illness
- physical illness (eg thyroid disorder, diabetes, asthma)
- nutritional deficiencies (eg vitamin B, magnesium, prebiotics)
- neurochemical imbalances (eg low serotonin)
- low blood sugar
- toxic overwhelm
- caffeine
- alcohol
- nicotine
- artificial sweeteners
- genetic predisposition
By addressing these triggers you will be halfway there to controlling and significantly reducing your anxiety. This involves making lifestyle and behavioural changes, and in some cases pursuing therapy and other strategies for inner wellness.
Notice I said ‘halfway there’. To get yourself all of the way there is to be practising a mindfulness or meditation technique that establishes a strong inner centre for wellbeing.
Why is this necessary? The major cause of anxiety is actually found in the human mind itself, and in particular is a result of:
- cognitive distortions
- overthinking
- poor emotional regulation
Mindfulness can address all three of these, and has been shown in scientific studies, and indeed by MRI brain scans, to successfully regulate and reduce anxiety. The brain’s fear centre, the amygdala, literally shrinks, while the brain’s emotional regulation centres (anti-anxiety centres) such as the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex, come online more and grow, both in grey matter density and white matter connectivity.
Let’s now look at how the above three factors can cause or exacerbate anxiety.
Cognitive Distortions
Cognitive distortions are habits of faulty, irrational thinking that can cause anxiety. Why are they faulty and irrational? Because they involve distortions of thought, such as false perceptions, exaggerations, ommisions, and unjustified conclusions. They are a spanner in the works that will disrupt your guidance system and, in the case of anxiety, put you on red alert for no good reason.
The main cognitive distortions that I work with are:
- selective thinking
- unjustified conclusions
- generalisation
- exaggeration
- underrating
- black and white thinking
Often we sabotage our inner wellness, and reinforce negative thinking and negative states such as anxiety, by not understanding and seeing things clearly and accurately because we are unknowingly thinking with these cognitive distortions, such as jumping to conclusions about being under threat. This can occur more easily in cases of anxiety because stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol will be circulating in the body, which can fuel the belief that you are under threat.
These cognitive distortions need identifying, challenging, and clearing when they are contributing to anxiety. I will describe how to do this in a forthcoming post; but for now, you’ll be able to see that mindfulness can bring conscious awareness to the cognitive distortions behind anxiety, and from your centre you can regain a clearer, fuller perspective of things that can lead to the relief of anxiety.
Overthinking
Overthinking is the automatic, reactive, and excessive recycling of thoughts that can cause anxiety. Overthinking can be triggered by thoughts, emotions and sensations, including high adrenaline or cortisol levels that make you feel stressed, fearful, and panicky, even if there is no real reason to be. The mind then builds a net of fearful thoughts and conclusions:
- There’s something wrong.
- I won’t be able to do it.
- It’s too dangerous.
- I have no control.
- It will be a catastrophe.
- I might die.
With overthinking you are pulled out of your centre of awareness, and get entangled with your thoughts, losing the power, resourcefulness, and perspective that being in your centre brings you. One thought leads to another, and to another, and yet another. Thoughts are returned to, once, twice, and even countless times:
- Why have I got this pain?
- I can feel the pain right here.
- It’s not normal, something must be wrong.
- Why have I got this pain?
- What if it’s cancer?
- Why have I got this pain?
- Something must be wrong.
- What if it’s not something minor.
- What if I’ve got cancer?
- Has alcohol given me cancer?
- I know I’ve drunk too much in my past.
- I’ve read that alcohol causes cancer.
- This pain isn’t right.
- This is a symptom of cancer.
- What if I die?
- I don’t want to die!
You always have a choice whether to engage the thought and follow it, or just let it go. Mindfulness shows you this choice, and provides you with the means to let the thought go. But when you’re on automatic pilot, and outside of your mindful centre, you don’t see that choice, and get caught up in overthinking without realising. When the thoughts are anxious, fear-based ones, such as the unjustified thought that you are under threat, are going to experience a catastrophe, or are going to die, you recreate your anxiety in each moment that the automatic thoughts are pursued and elaborated upon.
Poor Emotional Regulation
When fear or anxious thoughts cycle repeatedly, you will be controlled by them, and this can cause anxiety. It’s like being on a runaway train that you’re at the mercy of. You try and make sense of the anxiety, but the emotion just ignores you and continues with its takeover. When anxiety becomes chronic or a repetitive condition, cropping up every now and then, the amygdala starts to grow and you become hard wired for stress and anxiety. The amygdala can then take over the processing of your experience, labelling each event or expectation of it as fearful, threatening, or most likely threatening by default.
The job of the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex is to process your emotions consciously and as accurate as possible. They allow you to de-escalate the anxiety, detach from the fear, and restore positive functioning. When you practise mindfulness meditation, these anti-anxiety centres start to activate and take control of your mind’s state.
Conclusion
The cause of anxiety consists of triggers and predisposing factors that require you to recognise and make positive lifestyle and behavioural changes to reduce your anxiety or your tendency for it.
By far the biggest cause of anxiety is your own state of mind, and the way that your reactive thoughts and emotions control that state through your cognitive distortions, overthinking, and lack of emotional regulation and mindfulness. You aren’t at fault here: you most likely just haven’t used mindfulness skilfully enough to optimise your state of mind. In my next post on anxiety I shall explain how to do this.
Next Step: if you suffer from anxiety and would like to get some clarity about the cause and how to increase your inner wellness, consider booking an Inner Wellness Guidance Call with me.
Note: if your anxiety is severe, or if you’re on anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medication, do seek medical advice from your doctor as you start to take greater responsibility for your health.
