Brendan Lloyd PhD
September 2022, r: 08.00
This article is about the experience of anxiety and how to change the way you feel. The mind skill perspective is about empowerment through knowledge and skill. The aim is to thrive, not just survive. You can uncover your strengths, overcome challenges and embrace wellbeing with good knowledge and practise.
You are probably familiar with anxiety by how it feels. It can be the discomfort in your gut. It can be the churn, the nausea, the butterflies, the tight chest, the dread, the fear, the guilt, the anger, etc. It can be that subtle discomfort in your head, neck and shoulders.
It’s interesting to note, however, that the felt experience of anxiety[i] is seen as a symptom of a mental illness. What is more, the illness theory does not actually explain how you get to feel that way. There is nothing in the illness theory that explains the felt experience. We’re supposed to just believe that the connection is there.
We note the felt experience and ask, “How does that happen?”
There's a change in your body
Remember that we’re talking about how it feels to experience anxiety. We end up feeling anxiety because of the changes that occur in our body. We are talking about a chemical change, but we’re not talking about a theoretical “chemical imbalance”.
You don’t necessarily have an illness just because the chemical-structure of your body changes. For example, if your body goes into digestion mode, or healing mode, then the chemistry of your body will change to do the digesting or healing. The chemicals of your body will ebb and flow according to your challenges and needs.
Example of a chemical change
We can dip our toes in to the shallow end to get started. This is a non-anxiety example to get the ball rolling. This example shadows anxiety. The illustration shows how the chemical change happens and how the chemical change can resolve itself.
Let’s say that you’re having a relaxing coffee in a café with a couple of friends in the mid-afternoon. Let’s say that you glance down at your watch and you get a fright; your body chemistry changes; it changes how you feel right then and there on the spot.
You may not notice the change in how you feel, but you will behave how you feel. For example, you leap up from the table and quickly gather your stuff. As you’re rushing off you explain to your friends that you didn’t realise the time; and that the kids will be getting off the school bus in a few minutes; and that you have to be there to pick them up to take them home. You look a bit panicky as you say, "Bye!"
The glance at your watch had something to do with the chemical change in your body, i.e., the adrenaline release. It wasn’t just a random glance at a watch face that triggered the change in your body; it was the sudden realisation of ‘emergency’ that got the adrenaline going. Your body goes into emergency mode when triggered.
Any challenge/demand/threat will trigger an emergency response in your autonomic nervous system. It was the realised challenge/demand/threat that did it. When we say “realised” we’re talking about perception. When we talk about perception, we’re talking about the meaning, the way you see it.
Mainly your body will remain in emergency mode up until the issue is resolved. Once the demand or threat or challenge has passed, or been resolved in some way, the emergency mode in your body will stop; and the chemical structure of your body will return to baseline. How you feel will change.
For example, you get into your car, start the engine as you look at the dash-clock. On reassessment you realise (perceive) that you have plenty of time. Your adrenaline will return to baseline quickly, in good time; and if you have the time to notice, you will feel different. Your body will change from panicky to relaxed, at least relatively speaking.
In our daily lives, all things being equal, the adrenaline comes and goes as is required. All things being equal, the normal ebbing and flowing of adrenaline in our body will not produce anxiety at all.
How anxiety happens
So, how does anxiety happen?
The first point to notice, in the example above, is the triggering event. You looked at your watch and you saw something that alarmed you. Then there is the release of adrenaline that brings the feeling of urgency.
In the triggering event there are two parts. There is the meaning (mind) part and there is the feeling (body) part. The meaning is urgency and the feeling is the adrenaline.
Note the order of events. Note that there is a perception – then the feeling; not the other way around. The feeling part is a response to the meaning part.
In other words, if it looks like a threat then there is adrenaline, no ifs or buts. No questions asked; your body just jumps onto the emergency button.[ii] The first whack on the emergency button (initial response) will happen before you’re aware of it consciously.
From the trigger you have one good squirt of adrenaline into your bloodstream and a sudden surge of noradrenaline through the synapses of your nerves. But like a puff of smoke, the adrenaline will be gone within minutes. Unless of course there is another whack on the emergency button.
The reason why anxiety is not part of the story in the above example is because the adrenaline resolved back to normal very quickly. The adrenaline stopped when the emergency was resolved. In this example, again we’re dealing with a perception. You look at the dash clock and you reassess the urgency to none. Done and dusted.
Adrenaline will resolve and dissolve very quickly. Adrenaline will not linger and lurk in your body. Once your adrenal glands stop producing adrenaline it will be present in your body for minutes – tops. One release of adrenaline will not be in your body for hours, days, weeks, etc.
For the experience of anxiety there needs to be a repeated and continuous release of adrenaline, not just one whack on the emergency button. Anxiety is not caused by just one release of adrenaline. It isn’t even caused by elevated levels of adrenaline as a one-off event. But anxiety certainly is the feeling that you get from sustained exposure to elevated levels of adrenaline.
For the experience of anxiety, we need sustained elevated adrenaline. Underline “sustained”.
It's the head-chatter
The head-chatter is an event in your mind that carries the threat; and the whack on your emergency button is an event in your body in response to the threat.
What's your head-chatter about? What stories do you have going around in your head? What particular scenarios and theories do you play-out in your mind?
Here is an illustration. There you are crossing the road; you see the bus in time and you leap out of its way. On face value the whole event involves one good whack on the emergency button. Let’s estimate that a single whack is a sufficient amount of adrenaline to launch you from in front of the bus to the footpath.
There you are on the footpath. The bus’s exhaust fumes are still in your nostrils. The head-chatter fires up; you’re not going to take it lying down. ‘How dare he where did he get his licence out of a Wheaties packet’ You continue as you walk off down the footpath. 'He tried to kill me I’m going to call the cops he did it on purpose what’s the bus company’s number he won’t get away with it if I can help it I’m going to phone them up I’ll have him sacked maybe he’s just blind that makes it worse…' (Note: there is no punctuation when illustrating head-chatter.)
In this example, it's the actual threat of mortal peril that activated the emergency button in the first place. In other words, seeing the bus coming at you got your adrenaline to squirt into your veins and got your synapses pumping. Then, it’s the head-chatter that continues to activate your emergency button after the bus has passed.
The head-chatter that continues in this way will keep your adrenaline level elevated. The threat of mortal peril has passed but the threat of something-else continues; imperfection perhaps, or maybe persecution. There is an ongoing threat of one sort or another because the adrenaline is still elevated.
Suppose another illustration. There you are brushing your teeth in the morning, before you head out into the world. As you brush, your mind wanders. Next thing you know you feel a bit ill. Your body chemistry has changed. Your gut is feeling somewhat nauseous. There’s an uncomfortable warmth or tingle in your solar plexus (the area just under your diaphragm). You then notice the discomfort that you call anxiety.
A lot of the time when we have those moments, like in the teeth brushing scenario, we just ignore it and launch ourselves into the day regardless. All the same, the scenario still represents an adrenaline releasing event. So, what is the threat?
Whatever the threat, whilst brushing your teeth, it is not an actual threat. In other words, there is no bus charging through your bathroom. For that matter, there is nothing to conquer, endure or escape from there in your bathroom. Here's the thing; your emergency button is activated by actual or apparent threats.
In the teeth brushing scenario you may not have noticed the chatter. At the very least you may not have given much thought to it. The chatter might have been something that you dismissed as nonsense.
Let’s say that whilst brushing your teeth a memory popped into your head. You remembered last night’s social event. As you wander in your mind you latch on to the idea, 'God I made a fool of myself.' This idea may as well be a bus coming at you. Here is the initial hit on the emergency button and the initial adrenaline release.
The chatter can then develop from there. 'Why do I do that they must think that I’m an idiot there must be something wrong with me I should keep away from those situations you’d think that I’d know better by now but I just keep on falling into the same trap...'
When reading the head-chatter samples, read them not for the drama in the content, but instead to understand the threat. The chatter is the unrelenting expression of the threat. The threat is expressed in the story or narrative, in the chatter.
Your body responds and does its job. Whilst the head-chatter continues, whether you’re aware of it or not, the adrenaline production continues and you end up feeling ill or anxious, or generally distressed.
Triggers
Your adrenaline is triggered. In the teeth brushing scenario, objectively speaking, there is no reason for the adrenaline. There is nothing about the bathroom or teeth-brushing that requires adrenaline as a response. Adrenaline is not part of the solution. Yet there it is, in your body, in your bathroom, on your way into your day.
The trigger for the teeth brushing scenario is in the memory of an event from the night before. Memories are not a threat; but that memory did contain what looked like a threat. In this example, at this stage, we could suppose that the head-chatter expresses the threat of shame.
As a further example, you glance across your workplace office space and you see two colleagues having an earnest discussion. In that instance your body chemistry changes. You may or may not notice the butterflies in your gut. You may or you may not notice the chatter that begins, 'Oh god what are they up to now I bet it’s not good for me…' etc. Then for the rest of the day you're stuck with a queasy feeling in your gut as your head-chatter mulls it over. In this example, the chatter could be expressing the threat of persecution.
Take another example. A man is walking through the house looking for his wife. He walks into the bedroom and there she is sitting on the side of their bed giggling into her mobile phone. The chemistry of his body instantly changes. He is flooded with adrenaline. He is threatened by what he sees (perceives) as abandonment. He spins on his heels, stomps out of the room slamming the door behind him. His chatter starts, 'You know there needs to be a rule in this house no mobile phones after six o’clock…' In this example he feels the adrenaline as outrage and anger that seems to last for weeks as he continues to churn and gnaw on it in the head-chatter.
Or there you are on a country road where the speed limit is 80kph. There are no overtaking opportunities and you are fourth in line behind a small bus doing 60kph. The chatter fires up 'Come on what's the matter with you surely you can get that thing to go faster you're a power-tripping time waster I've better things to do…' The chemistry of your body changes and your adrenaline levels increase as the head-chatter develops. Here we are illustrating the threat of deprivation.
As examples, in the bathroom, office, bedroom, country road scenarios, quite likely the trigger is not noticed as a trigger. This could be true for any head-chatter on any issue.
An event will contain a trigger if there is a feature of the event that appears threatening. In other words, there is the meaning for you that says – threat.
When the meaning say threat
To illustrate the point: Anything could potentially look like a threat.
What about the cupboard doors in my office? Intellectually, you could confidently argue that the cupboard doors are completely neutral as far as meaning is concerned. There’s no way that the cupboard door could threaten anyone.
Of course, cupboard doors in a psychologist’s office could symbolically represent a threat of one sort or another (as could any door anywhere). It could be the threat of abuse. The chatter could sound-like, 'Whose he got in there spying on me?' Or the doors could represent the threat of shame. The chatter might sound-like, 'If there’s someone in there listening they’ll think I’m crazy.'
Just to be clear here, we're talking about your reading of the object or event. Symbolic meaning in this context is the meaning that you project onto an object or event because of what it appears to means to you.
As in the example, you see the cupboard doors and you feel the shame; or you see the cupboard doors and you feel the abuse. Or you see the cupboard door and you don’t even notice them. We see the threats that we're looking for. In psychology this is known as selective attention.
Our attention is drawn selectively toward any threat (actual or apparent). We will always be prone to taking-on the threat in the elements of truth. In the case of my cupboard doors, of course there could be someone hiding in the cupboard; it's not at all probable but it is possible (I’d have to remove the filing cabinets). In this example the element of truth is the possibility.
Psychologically speaking, we read the environment, and the events in our minds, for meaning. Humans are more than capable of reading meaning into objects or events. For example, there are many people who can see the face of Jesus on a slice of burnt toast.[iii]
Symbolic meaning is everywhere. We are constantly reading the events, in the environment or in our mind, for meaning. We are particularly looking out for our threats.
Opposite to our values are our threats. We all have our own set of values, thus we all have our own set of threats. We focus our attention selectively. We find the threats that we’re looking for. This human behaviour is so close to us that we don't even notice that we do it.
Our response to a trigger is automatic. We pretty well have no control over these conditioned responses. In other words, these are learned responses. We end up with these well-worn grooves in our personalities as a result of our learning from years of experience. We end up with a hair-trigger on certain cues; this is our conditioning.
We are not born with these head-chatter threats. We accumulate our knowledge of the world through learning or modelling. We mainly learn to survive within the environment in which we grow up. Mainly we're talking about our family of origin, peers and teachers. At the same time, we each had our own unique place in our family of origin. By the time we turn 20 our personality is the sum-total of our adaptions to life.
Even within families you will find different personalities. Of course, who we end up as is shaped by the people who bring us up. All the same, we each live in our own world with our own unique experiences. Even something as simple as sibling order has an influence upon who-you-are as a person in the end. You end up as yourself, of course, so there are aspects of your personality that are distinctly you, like your own set of threats.
Whatever triggers you, may not trigger the person next to you. For example, one person sees my cupboard doors and experiences shame; another might experience abuse; and another will have no reaction at all. So, it's not the cupboard doors that we need to talk about. We need to talk about the threats and what to do about them.
If you accept that triggers exist as a force-of-nature, then you can learn about yours from Mindful observation. You can even see the patterns that some triggers form. Certain triggers may relate to certain situations. As an example, if abandonment applies to you then you may not find triggers in the workplace so much, but you do encounter them at home and some social activities.
In some cases, you might even learn that certain triggers are dependable, reliable and totally predictable. These are the ones that you can see coming. You might even be able to avoid them.
To the extent you can predict, control and avoid certain triggers in your life, then take this as your first line of defence against the experience of anxiety. For example, you wouldn’t step in front of a bus on purpose, so why wouldn’t you avoid triggers if you could see them coming?
The first line of defence for managing anxiety is to avoid the avoidable triggers.
Once triggered
There are the unavoidable triggers. You will be triggered. There is no question of that. Triggers are a force of nature. The trigger contains the meaning of threat, then there is the adrenaline release. You have no control over that first adrenaline release from the triggering.
To paint a picture, the trigger gets you on the emergency button, the next thing to do is to get off the emergency button. How to get yourself off the emergency button is the question.
In blunt terms, the answer is to resolve the threat. With actual threats, like a bus coming at you, you jump out of the way. If you jump out of the way in time, then you resolve the threat. To generalise further, you get the bill, then you pay it. There was an issue, now it is resolved. But…
Head-chatter threats are not the same as actual threats. They are threats never the less. The noticeable adrenaline says that there is a threat. The same rules apply to both actual and apparent threats. Somehow the threat must be resolved one way or the other.
The key is the head-chatter. If it weren’t for the chatter your adrenaline would not remain elevated. You would experience some elevation of adrenaline from the initial trigger, but that experience will pass quickly if you give it a chance. Continuing the chatter only serves to continue the adrenaline and thus continue the suffering.
You can’t actually ‘jump out of the way’ of head-chatter threats, but you can positively disengage from the chatter. If you succeed in positively disengaging then you effectively resolve the head-chatter threat.
It is not a theory. If you successfully positively disengage from the head-chatter, then those head-chatter threats do not have access to your emergency button.
The second line of defence for managing anxiety is to positively disengage from the head-chatter.
Positive Disengagement
You need to exit the head-chatter with positive disengagement because of the way your nervous system works.
Negative disengagement is like stomping your feet as you leave the room and then slamming the door behind you. Positive disengagement is like saying ‘good night’ as you go off quietly to bed.
There are the four don’ts for positively disengaging from the head-chatter…
- Don’t fight the head-chatter.
- Don’t defend the head-chatter.
- Don’t deny the head-chatter.
- Don’t rationalise the head-chatter.
If you’re fighting, defending, denying or rationalising the head-chatter, then what you have is more head-chatter. Just the actions of fighting, defending, denying or rationalising will get you on the emergency button. The objective is to get off the emergency button, not to find new ways to keep on whacking on it.
Negative disengagement is enough to keep you on the emergency button. You don’t need a fight going on in your head. Fighting and flighting in your head sets the adrenaline off. It gets you on the emergency button. It prolongs your suffering. You can’t just give your chatter the forks and a raspberry. It won’t work.
You want your mind to communicate with your body in a useful way to stop the suffering. Your mind already communicates with your body through the head-chatter. It’s saying, “threat, threat, threat”. Then your body responds with the emergency button, ‘whack, whack, whack’. We need the language that says “it’s all good, put the adrenaline away”.
If you can, then put the head-chatter away. In most cases this is exactly what you will do once you know that it is a thing to do. Particularly, once you have connected the head-chatter to your suffering.
But what about those chatter events that you just can’t get out of our head? What about that chatter that loops and hammers? Sometimes the chatter has that strong pull. It sucks us in. It can be like a honey trap. We get sucked in, then we get stuck.
The head-chatter honey trap
The question is: “What’s keeping me in the head-chatter, why can’t I just let it go?”
This question you can answer for yourself once you tune your ears to the head-chatter. You can listen to your head-chatter in a particular way. There are features of your head-chatter that will reveal themselves to you with Mindful observation.
In this context, a Mindful observation means that you apply your non-judging and curious mind. In other words, you make yourself open to learning from your head-chatter. You would do your Mindful observations in your daily life on purpose.
We get stuck for two reasons. Firstly, we can experience outrage for being triggered in the first place. Then secondly, there is always an element of truth in the head-chatter’s story. The element of truth will highlight the trigger-points in the chatter. The outrage and the elements of truth will capture and hold our attention in the chatter.
In your chatter, you’ll have at least fifty reasons why you’re right. You’ll have another fifty reasons to stick with the chatter’s story. On the other hand, there is only one reason for you to positively disengage from the head-chatter. This one reason is to change the way you feel.
So, when the head-chatter has you in its grip and you’re stuck, then you need leverage to break free. This is when we look for the third line of defence, which is to address the threat.
Address the threat
We address the threat to resolve it. We need to resolve it because this is what our nervous system requires to put the adrenaline away. We put the adrenaline away to change how we feel.
Because we’re dealing with head-chatter threats we need to define what we mean by “resolve”. Basically, if you silence the chatter and get off the emergency button then the threat is resolved.
For our purposes, the threat is resolved if the adrenaline is back to baseline levels.
In the first line of defence, we resolve the threat by avoiding the avoidable triggers. In the second line of defence, we resolve the threats by positively disengaging from the head-chatter. Now we’re looking at a third line of defence that extends to addressing the threat to silence the chatter.
Yes, you will get on the emergency button because of a threat, any threat. It’s true, it doesn’t matter which threat. Your emergency button will respond to any threat, real or apparent. So, no worries, it’s easy to get on the emergency button, but getting off it could require some effort on occasions.
The objective in the third line of defence to change how you feel, is to silence the chatter by addressing the threat.
Resources
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Endnotes
[i] Anxiety that originates from psychological processes as described herein. What is said here does not apply to felt experiences of anxiety that are due to physical reasons for example concussion, amine sensitivity, brain tumour, or a 'psychological masquerade'.
[ii] Sympathetic response in the autonomic nervous system.
[iii] Google the term "face of Jesus on a slice of burnt toast" and select from the list of about 6.2m items.