Hi All,
I thought I'd share my experience as someone who has been through anxiety and come through the other side. I was very lucky to have (and still have) a fantastic therapist to help and teach me.
Why we get anxiety:
I sure know how confusing anxiety can be! It doesn't feel like it comes from anywhere clear or that it has an obvious purpose... but in fact is is strangely systematic.
Anxiety does two things (we will explore both in detail); 1) protects you from something. 2) makes you feel shit and forces you to act on making yourself feel less shit.
>> 1) Protecting you
Anxiety is one of the mind’s best defense mechanisms. Whatever you experience anxiety about it nearly always leads to a reduction in action, connection and conflict with others. It could be that you don’t speak out, get on stage, tell someone you're pissed off with them, leave your room (as someone in this thread is having a hard time doing) or go to your friends house for dinner (re op). Anxiety = not doing things.
Not doing things is a fantastic option if you just want to survive! I’m fairly sure if I spent the day in my bedroom and had a pizza posted through my letterbox I would make it through the next 24 hours fairly unscathed, and a part of me thinks that is a very smart idea. It’s very good to stay alive.
The confusing thing about being an adult with anxiety is that we are protecting ourselves from things that we don’t need protecting from any more.
Being young:
When you are small (under 10 or so) there are a few big differences from being an adult.
1) You really really need to keep big people (parents) around. You are genuinely very vulnerable when you are little. A five year old is not very good at making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it’s extremely important to have someone (a parent) there to help. A nine year old is not very good at defending itself vs a 32 year old bodybuilder, a big person (parent) is an extremely important tool for protection. If they are not there, you really could die.
2) You feel like you control / are responsible for more than you are. It is hard to understand that you are growing up into an imperfect world where, despite you being good, bad things are happening. It can be common, and often easier, for a child to feel that the world is good, but it has been bad so bad things have happened. The child has more control that way.
These two things combined mean that unlucky children teach themselves very strong and very misguided lessons at at young age. I lost my father at eight and I certainly did.
There is often a traumatic event - a divorce, violence, a huge argument, a death - that results in one parent / carer leaving, or almost leaving, the family hub. As discussed above, the love of the ‘big people’ is genuinely indispensable to a child. If you don’t have big people love, you probably will die and death is very scary.
The child finds a way to blame this on itself. It must have done something wrong for this loss, or almost-loss, to have happened and it must not do it again! Toe the line. Keep everyone happy. YOU MUST KEEP THEM HAPPY OTHERWISE YOU COULD DIE. This is a very sensible narrative for a young child that has been through a trauma.
Being older:
Now that you are older two things have happened.
The first is that, if you’re lucky, you don’t need the help of any big people to make it through the day. You can make a p&j sandwich on your own! You can survive loss. It will make you sad but it will not kill you.
The second is that you can be more objective. If you’re parents get divorced when you are 25 years old, you are more likely to see it is because your dad’s train watching hobby is just out of hand, rather than it being a reflection on who you are as a person.
But your anxiety was not taught to you when you were a grown up, it was taught to you when you were a child - so it makes no sense in the world of an adult. You don’t need to be (that) scared of pissing someone off as an adult! You don’t need to be (that) scared of someone you love leaving you as an adult. You will make it through. But your emotions connect you to the perspective you had when you were a child - if you piss people off, if someone leave you - you could die. No wonder you are feeling anxious! I would be (and was) too.
Pissing people off, or having them leave you, or saying something offensive, or not making EVERYONE happy - can happen quite easily in the adult world. It can happen at the shop, at work, at a party, in a relationship. These are normal activities that you probably will survive - but they appear very very scary to a person with anxiety because these activities are more than what they are. They are opportunities for the world to fall apart and for you to maybe die.
>> 2) Anxiety makes you feel shit and makes you do something to try and feel less shit
As I hope you have learnt so far, the strong feelings of anxiety that one can have do not come from a very logical (grownup) place. They are beliefs that were useful when you were young and felt like you were holding the world together, but don’t make sense any more.
(Note: if your anxiety seems to have popped up from nowhere after years of being fine, it could be that you have touched an emotional depth that you have not since you were young. For example, my anxiety flares up when I’m in a relationship and experiencing strong feelings of connection / love - as a child might with a parent.)
The whole brain is really a very clever thing. Much cleverer than the bit of the brain you spend your mind talking to. As odd as it sounds, a part of it knows that you have a belief that is a little out of place and causing you problems in your day to day life - and it wants you to fix it.
I’m willing to bet if you have strong feelings of anxiety you are having frequent, intense, and mostly unpleasant dreams. I’d bet you’ve even had some recurring dreams. Dreams are another weirdly systematic process which can seem complex, but not to be discussed today (my email is below if you want a walk through). These dreams are no meaningless coincidence, they are there to nudge you towards fixing whatever no-longer-useful belief you have.
Like I said, the whole brain is really very clever and it knows a great way to make you take notice of something is to cause you immense pain! (Just like it is useful for a rash to itch, so you see you have it and take care of your skin.) And just like the synergistic of a bee and a flower (the bee gets the food, the flower gets its pollen spread), anxiety protects you and, through its pain, forces you to take a look at yourself.
So that is what’s going on. (Apologies if you feel this is an oversimplification, but this structure covers the common narrative. I’m sure there are many cases I’m not dealing with.)
How to face anxiety:
To face it, you need to say - “Hello child brain, I see what you’re doing - you really are very smart! But today I’m not going to listen to you because I probably don’t need protecting from whatever you’re trying to prevent. I’ll probably be ok”
Then you’re child (emotional) brain will say - “WHAT THE FUCK!! WE’RE TOTALLY GOING TO DIE!!!”
And then you are going to have to use all the courage you can muster to tell it to shut up and do the thing you are so scared of doing. And see what happens (your child brain will be watching too) - you’ll probably be fine. When you’ve done this a few times the child brain will calm down and you’ll move through this anxiety… onto the next one!
Also, if you can, get a good therapist.
If this was helpful / you want to reach out - please do so at eichler.summers[at]gmail.com. I’d be interested to hear feedback.
If you are from YC, or a particularly kind rich person / VC and you think there should be a scalable solution to anxiety, please get in touch. I would love to start a company in this space. I am a credible (TechCrunch Disrupt nominated, ex VC) individual who just needs a nudge.