Is Your Anxiety “False” or “True”
How to minimize avoidable anxiety and understand true anxiety
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It’s become a label that so many adults and young people wear. Anxiety. Instead of thinking of our anxiety as reflecting a different or sensitive attunement to the world, we often work to define it, treat it, and extinguish it. We project this idea that we can be cured, that we are somehow broken, or that we must self-care our way out of it…even if that leads to more anxiety. I’ve written about how anxiety can be a superpower before, but in this week’s episode, my guest Dr. Ellen Vora and I discuss the helpful difference between “false” and “true” anxiety.
Let me first address these labels, “false” and “true.” I know that at first glance, the labels can feel dismissive, and that isn’t the intention. Instead, it's about avoidable anxiety that comes from a biological stress response (false) vs. a purposeful anxiety that drives us to action, helps motivate us to confront issues in our lives and our communities, and helps us connect to what matters most (true). Understanding the whole picture of how and why we feel anxious and what we can do to address it can benefit parents, caregivers and children.
When our body responds to a situation with anxiety, it is trying to make sense of something it feels. It is a biological response that exists to keep us alive, safe, and alert. We NEED this response to provide information, but our brain urgently works to create meaning where there is a physical response. To think its way out of a sense of panic or pain. This type of anxiety has a root cause that we can and must address. To find what works for us, not what we are told is good for us. Instead of focusing on a diagnosis or a label, we can focus on how we are caring for ourselves, our bodies, hormones, relationships to others, to nature, to play, to pleasure, and connection. This is true self-care that is about what we each individually need, not the pressure of what others can and say is right for us.
As Dr. Vora and I discuss, we live in a world fraught with reasons to be anxious. Our biological stress response is activated ALL of the time, and with good reason. First, there are the daily stressors coming from social media, corporations, family life, and work schedules. Then, layer on the crises’ around mass shootings, climate change, war, and poverty. The world has become a scarier place than when many of us were raised, and there are many good “reasons” to feel anxious. That said, anxiety can’t be treated according to a textbook plan.
With mental health, there is no "check these boxes, therefore it's this diagnosis, therefore it's this treatment, therefore we cured it." If you're feeling anxious, it doesn't tell me the underlying root cause, and it doesn't tell me the cure. We are not gonna solve things with a neat bow. - Dr. Ellen Vora
We need to dismantle our traditional understanding of anxiety in order to approach it holistically; in order to see the whole person we are, and not just the symptom or the diagnosis. We are not just the medication we take or meditation we try, we are working towards balance and understanding. When we accept that, we can allow ourselves the space to find our own peace and remove the blame and shame and take steps to set ourselves up for more ease.
What have we done in society to think that any of our struggles to manage our mental health can be attributed to weakness of spirit or of self? - Dr. Aliza Pressman
Together, we can change the conversation about anxiety - for our children and ourselves.
Good job