Anxiety is an experiential state that is familiar to almost everyone in some way. Anxiety involves vague fears, worries, and distress, which often manifest as physical sensations. Like other emotional experiences, anxiety serves the purpose of helping humans adapt and survive. Anxiety acts as an internal alarm bell in the face of potential threats, prompting us to protect ourselves and others.
Anxiety helps us prepare for threats and make things safer when needed. A reasonable amount of anxiety is part of being human and human existence. When anxiety becomes a problem, it involves excessive, paralyzing, limiting, or generalized anxiety in relation to the situation, as well as behaviors that maintain the problem.
What does anxiety mean?
Anxiety is not a clearly defined emotional experience; rather, it manifests in diverse and individual psychophysiological states. When an anxiety experience is examined, it typically involves emotions, thoughts, bodily sensations, and action tendencies.
On an emotional level, common experiences include worry, fear, tension, and uncertainty. Thoughts may be ruminative, anxious, and oriented toward anticipating catastrophe. They can relate both to experiences of the self (for example, “I can’t cope,” “I am helpless and alone”) and to other people or circumstances (for example, “I will be laughed at,” “I will be abandoned”; “If I don’t keep checking, the worst will happen”).
Anxiety shows up in the body as various symptoms of hyperarousal, such as heart palpitations, shortness of breath, trembling, dizziness, or sweating. On the level of behavior, it often appears as short-term coping strategies for dealing with anxiety, such as avoiding anxiety-provoking situations or thoughts, suppressing emotions, checking, anticipating, and controlling oneself or others.
Anxiety does not arise in a vacuum; rather, it is linked to external events and internal mental processes. Anxiety disorders are therefore often described according to what triggers or generates the anxiety.
Forms of anxiety
- In social anxiety, the focus of worry is the fear of being judged by others and of appearing in an unfavorable light.
- In panic disorder and fear of public places, the core experience is the sense of losing control that these situations evoke.
- Trauma-related anxiety is triggered by signs reminding the person of the traumatic event.
- In generalized anxiety, there are multiple triggers for worry, such as health concerns, everyday problems, or fears about the future.
An anxiety state can involve a variety of worries related to oneself, work, and relationships. A diagnosis provides a general overview, but a more detailed understanding of anxiety comes from exploring each person’s individual experiences and the meanings they attach to them. Anxiety can thus be seen as a surface-level emotion, beneath which deeper emotional experiences about oneself and others are often hidden.
Why are we anxious?
We humans differ biologically in terms of the emotions and intensity with which we respond to sensory stimuli and how well we are able to regulate them. These differences in temperament can already be seen in small babies. Some babies are calm and settle down more easily, while others react strongly, with intense emotions, and need a lot of reassurance and regulation from their parents. Studies show that the latter temperament trait is associated with later anxiety sensitivity, as well as social shyness and timidity.
Individual temperament, however, does not determine the course of life. When a highly emotional child receives sufficient understanding for their feelings and support in regulating them, these skills become internalized as their own emotional and self-regulation abilities. Likewise, when a shy child is given an appropriate amount of security and encouragement, their shyness does not become an obstacle to a healthy social life.
“Often the problem is not the anxiety itself, but how well it can be regulated.”
Early relationships play a crucial role in how a child learns to soothe themselves and regulate their emotions. A securely attached child turns to their caregiver when feeling threatened, fearful, or anxious. When the sense of safety is restored within this supportive connection, the child returns to exploring the world. These experiences of security begin to internalize as the ability to calm oneself, and confidence in handling the world grows through positive experiences.
In avoidant attachment, the child cannot trust the parent’s ability to provide emotional security, and the solution is to suppress emotions. In ambivalent attachment, security is unpredictable, which often causes the child to intensify their distress. Reality is not so black and white, but this gives an indication of how a child’s ability to express, experience, and regulate anxiety and distress develops in early relationships and why these skills may remain underdeveloped. Often the problem is not the anxiety itself, but how it can be regulated.
How can therapy help you deal with anxiety?
1. Increasing anxiety regulation
Anxiety is an unpleasant state, so it is natural to want relief from it. In therapy, you can learn and practice skills for calming yourself and regulating anxiety right from the start. These include various mindfulness and grounding exercises, calming and restorative breathing, meditative movement, and muscle relaxation. It is a good idea to do the exercises together with your therapist at first, after which it will be easier to incorporate them into your daily life.
Similarly, different forms of exercise, spending time in nature, and doing things with your hands help to regulate anxiety. Many people who suffer from anxiety have a lot of stress and little good, active recovery. Reducing hyperarousal by adding more restorative moments to the day reduces anxiety.
“Learning regulation strategies is extremely important, but most of the time, individual psychological understanding of one’s anxiety is also needed.”
2. Finding out what exactly is causing your anxiety.
Learning regulation strategies is extremely important, but most of the time, individual psychological understanding of one’s anxiety is also needed. Sometimes this must come first, before regulation strategies become meaningful. By exploring the emotional experiences, thoughts, and life-history roots behind your anxiety, its significance becomes clearer and easier to understand.
Although the root causes of anxiety are individual, it is possible to identify a few typical situations as examples:
- Fear of social failure and embarrassment
One of the basic human needs is to belong to a group and receive acceptance and care from others. From an evolutionary perspective, the feeling of shame helps us stay within the group by expressing what is acceptable behavior and what is not.
However, many people have become sensitive to feelings of inferiority and shame based on their unpleasant experiences in relationships and have internalized an image of others as demanding, humiliating, or judgmental. These internalized feelings also affect new relationships, creating fears of being subjected to shame. Various protective mechanisms, such as avoiding or withdrawing from social situations, excessive preparation, or constant self-monitoring, are common. It is also common to ruminate on situations afterwards, which causes anxiety and stress.
- Experiences of helplessness and lack of control
Almost everyone who suffers from anxiety experiences some kind of helplessness in the face of their anxiety. The feeling of helplessness can also be deeper and more long-lasting, internalized through interaction. For some, it is defined by repeated experiences of not receiving help and not being given the tools to cope with their emotions or function in relationships, for example. They have been left too much on their own and left to fend for themselves. For others, their caregivers have been overprotective and overbearing, preventing them from developing their own abilities. Others have experienced events and traumas in their lives that have exceeded their psychological tolerance, leading to a deep sense of helplessness and insecurity.
“Many people have developed various ways of controlling and coping to protect themselves, which can, over time, become part of the problem.”
Feelings of helplessness are closely linked to a sense of loss of control, which can appear in sudden episodes, such as in panic, or as a constant worry about coping. Many people have developed various control and coping strategies to protect themselves, which can over time become part of the problem.
- Performance anxiety
Many people struggle with the demands of modern life, whether in work or studies, hobbies, or close relationships. One’s relationship with oneself is often demanding as well, showing up as a drive for good or even perfect performance in various areas of life. A sense of self-worth can be closely tied to external feedback and achievements, with the fear of failure constantly lurking around the corner. These patterns often have roots in early relationships and in the ways one learned to gain acceptance.
Anxiety can become cyclical: performing or striving temporarily reduces it, but in the long run, anxiety increases due to lack of recovery and neglect of one’s own needs. Many people are therefore at real risk of exhaustion.
Starting the change process together with a therapist
An essential part of therapy is identifying the difficult emotional experiences related to anxiety—both about oneself and others—and exploring the ways one has tried to cope with them. Through this kind of reflection, a life-history perspective often emerges: how past relationships and life experiences have shaped the way one anticipates current and future situations and responds to them. This process also brings up painful feelings and memories to be processed and shared within the empathetic environment of the therapeutic relationship.
Increased understanding provides a starting point from which one can begin to question one’s own anticipations and gradually start experimenting with new ways of acting and interacting. Previous coping strategies often come into a new light, and some of their problematic aspects become more visible.
Therapeutic work involves not only learning new ways to calm and regulate oneself but also developing other important skills, such as expressing one’s own feelings, needs, and boundaries. When a person becomes more in touch with their true emotions and needs and can express and share them in ways that suit them, anxiety decreases.
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What is causing the anxiety?
Even though the causes of anxiety are always individual, there are a few common situations that can help us figure out the possible root causes of anxiety:
- Fear of social failure and embarrassment
Being accepted and belonging to a group is one of the basic human needs. It is therefore very human to feel anxiety and stress when faced with various interpersonal challenges that threaten these basic needs. Defensive mechanisms may include avoiding social situations, excessive preparation, or self-monitoring. Ruminating on situations after the fact can also generate anxiety. - Experiences of helplessness and loss of control
Almost everyone who experiences anxiety also feels some sense of helplessness. This may stem, for example, from not receiving enough support as a child to cope with difficult emotions, or from overprotective caregiving that prevented the development of one’s own abilities. Additionally, life events or traumas that exceed a person’s psychological capacity to cope can create deep feelings of helplessness and insecurity. - Performance anxiety
Many people struggle with feelings of inadequacy and try to compensate through achievement and external validation. As a result, the fear of making mistakes constantly lurks in the background. Anxiety can easily become a vicious cycle: striving and performing temporarily relieve discomfort, but over time, lack of recovery and neglect of personal needs increase anxiety. This creates a significant risk of exhaustion.
About the author of this article
I am Leena Särkelä, a specialist psychologist, psychotherapist, trainer and supervisor.