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Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

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Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#11

Post by Barrin92 »

I think the advice of focusing on how to turn anxiety symptoms down and moderate physical responses are fine, but it's kind of missing the point, at least for serious cases of anxiety. I suffered pretty badly from it in my early 20s (apparently typical age for this kind of stuff), and you go very quickly from particular anxiety attacks being the issue, to fear of anxiety itself being the bigger issue.

An anxiety/panic attack is physically scary the very first time, but by the tenth time what you're really afraid of is the loss of control and the anticipation of anxiety. Chronic sleeplessness is often the same way. Dealing with literally sleeping better is one thing, but at some point the real issue becomes the mental concern with sleep itself.

Dealing with physical anxiety symptoms is good, but if you're mentally anxious your first thought after dealing with an anxiety attack by breathing deeply is "okay, but what if it doesn't work the next time?". It's that mental attitude that I think many people have trouble dealing with.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#12

Post by danlugo92 »

burlesona wrote: post #6

I noticed as young adult that I didn’t really worry or consciously stress, but my body had somewhat predictable reactions to situations that I would realize, in hindsight, were highly stressful. Those physical reactions sucked, and as they got worse over time, it really concerned me. At some point I was encouraged to go to CBT, which I did, but honestly it made things worse. I became hyper aware of how anxious I was…

Interesting. I've been reaching a similar conclusion recently.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#13

Post by sampl »

For anyone interested in this, I highly recommend the book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, a psychiatrist who studies PTSD.

He writes about this clearly and elegantly—must read for those dealing with anxiety, and certainly with any traumatic stress.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#14

Post by aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA »

A long time ago I read about a study which examined people’s physiological reactions to riding a rollercoaster. They compared coaster lovers to mildly-phobics. Their conclusion was the two groups experienced the same physiological reactions. What differed was their mental state, how they contextualized the event.

If that study was accurate (and god knows whether it was), then I would conclude that anxiety isn’t strictly “in the body.” It’s more like a feedback loop with the mental state.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#15

Post by Sunspark »

sammalloy wrote: post #8

One other thing to consider, that I rarely hear anyone talk about, is that anxiety can sometimes be a symptom of an underlying physiological condition or disease. For example, hypoglycemia-related anxiety is a common complaint.

This is true. Vestibular disorders in the inner ear can cause anxiety.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#16

Post by Jtsummers »

sammalloy wrote: post #8

One other thing to consider, that I rarely hear anyone talk about, is that anxiety can sometimes be a symptom of an underlying physiological condition or disease. For example, hypoglycemia-related anxiety is a common complaint.

If you discuss it with your doctor (and you should) they will run tests to try and rule out physiological causes. I know they did for me with both depression and anxiety, as I had other signs/symptoms of a thyroid disorder (turned out my thyroid was fine, I was just very stressed out and long term severe stress-induced anxiety, for me, leads to severe depression).

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#17

Post by bamboozled »

burlesona wrote: post #6

I noticed as young adult that I didn’t really worry or consciously stress, but my body had somewhat predictable reactions to situations that I would realize, in hindsight, were highly stressful. Those physical reactions sucked, and as they got worse over time, it really concerned me. At some point I was encouraged to go to CBT, which I did, but honestly it made things worse. I became hyper aware of how anxious I was…

> I just realized that there was nothing I could really do about anxiety or the physical symptoms that came along with it. I decided to mostly try to quit noticing and thinking about it. And that really helped.

I think this is mission accomplished from your mindfulness practice, you realized that you're not really doing anything and that anxiety just appears, you accepted it and it felt better.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#18

Post by lovelyviking »

sampl wrote: post #13

For anyone interested in this, I highly recommend the book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, a psychiatrist who studies PTSD. He writes about this clearly and elegantly—must read for those dealing with anxiety, and certainly with any traumatic stress.

What essential this book tells? Can you explain more about what you have learned from it?

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#19

Post by 22c »

Igelau wrote: post #7
22c wrote: post #4

I wish there were a little more examples of how this methodology deals with the stress/anxiety response. The article seems to spend more time talking about why it thinks "thinking brain" CBT/talk therapy doesn't work rather than "surival brain" techniques which do work. It also brings up "mindfulness" as one solution, which I consider almost analogous to CBT, or at least a close relative. It also seems counter-produc…

CBT seems very poorly suited to anxiety. 1. Most of the CBT literature is aimed at treating depression. 2. Anxiety is going to strike when you don't have the time or resources to sit down with pen and paper and analyze what's going on, and there is a lot of that in CBT.

I think it depends on what techniques are applied.

There seems to be specialist branches of CBT such as MCBH and ACT which might be better suited to these scenarios.

However, my point is that the article seems to spend more time telling us that CBT doesn't work (without providing much evidence) than why "survival brain" techniques are better.

I haven't learned much from this article other than some people think CBT is not suitable for dealing with anxiety.

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