Anxiety monster

Have you ever felt a sudden surge of energy when confronted with a stressful situation? Perhaps a tense meeting with your boss or an argument with a loved one?

Our bodies are finely tuned machines, designed to respond to threats with a burst of adrenaline, readying us to either face the danger or flee from it. Yet, in today's modern world, we don't always have the luxury to physically respond to every stressor. This misalignment between ancient survival mechanisms and contemporary challenges can lead to a mysterious and overwhelming sensation we all recognise: anxiety.

The roots of anxiety

But what if we told you that there's a way to unpack, understand, and even control this nebulous emotion? Dive into this exploration of anxiety's roots, how it manifests in our daily lives, and a potential therapeutic avenue that promises a deeper understanding of our inner workings.

At its core fundamental philosophy, anxiety is an increased level of entropy. Entropy is basically defined as the amount of excess energy that is unavailable to do useful work. It is stored and trapped. In other words, we suffer from anxiety when our excess energy is not released. The evolutionary argument suggests the fight and flight response. This is a healthy way of releasing anxiety. However, in this day we are not able to exactly 'fight or flight' in every situation; this excess energy gets stored and trapped. Instead of this energy being used up by the excessive motion in fight or flight, it needs to be used elsewhere. So, this excessive energy starts burning from within, and this is when anxiety symptoms are presented. Our heart starts beating faster, we blush, we sweat, and we shake. These are all internal movements designed to release this excess energy. 

Now you may ask, if this is the case, why doesn't everyone suffer from anxiety? The simple answer is they do. However, from childhood, your mind has developed very smart ways of releasing this excess energy in ways which may not be directly conscious to you (defence mechanisms). An obvious one may be what we call 'displacement'. Your boss gives you a hard time, and this builds excess energy within you, you do not release it then and there, on your drive home you contemplate the situation, the excess energy hardens into anxiety, and you arrive home and shout at your spouse for 'irrelevant' issues.

Now, this is a small example of such defence mechanisms but each individual has developed different ways of releasing this excess energy over the many years of their youth and adulthood; the problem is when your current array of defence mechanisms are not working well enough. 

Generalised anxiety disorder

Where anxiety becomes a disorder is when it has grown to a point where it is stopping you from leading your daily life. You may struggle to be around your loved ones, struggle to enjoy social situations, struggle to sleep, and perhaps even feel more pain. These are all expressions of anxiety that are being released without your control.

Now, for instance, you have accumulated a small level of anxiety from your boss on that day. Now what? The next day you arrive and the same happens, and this repeats for a few months. All of a sudden the little monster has become a big monster, and you start to show uncontrollable symptoms when your boss is around. You blush, stutter, or shake, and this really takes a toll on your work performance, this starts to double down, every day. Consciously, you have now associated your boss with these negative emotions. Unconsciously, however, you see your boss as an authority figure, so this spills into feeling negative emotions around all authoritative figures in your life, perhaps even your parents. All of a sudden this has spilled into all avenues of life and you feel stuck. 

So what do you do? You do what you know; you book an appointment with your GP. Your GP may be incredibly busy, accumulating a waiting list for months on end now; they may struggle to give you much time, prescribing medication to minimise these negative symptoms you are feeling. Different medications work in different functions, but generally, the method is either blocking or increasing a neurochemical function such that beta blockers antagonise the noradrenergic pathway and that SSRIs agonise the serotonergic pathway.

Hypnotherapy and anxiety

Hypnotherapy can be a great tool to unwind these scenarios and situations that have caused such anxiety. We may not even be consciously aware of such situations till we are bought into this beautiful state of hypnosis.

Hypnotherapy will work by shining a light on your unconscious, giving you the availability to rearrange what is needed. Once certain attributes have been bought to light, a good hypnotherapist will work to restructure the frameworks in which you express such emotions in order to bring back that control you've longed for. Such interventions are strongly weighted by individual differences so your therapist needs to personalise everything. If you would like to know more about how I work, please feel free to visit my profile.