Anxiety Is Not Your Enemy

Anxiety is a challenge that many of us face, but anxiety might not be the enemy we think it is.

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In American society, anxiety is rampant. In fact, anxiety disorders are one of the most common mental health challenges in the United States, and they impact more than 31 percent of the population at some point in their lifetime (NAMI, 2024). As a therapist, I frequently see clients come to therapy who are seeking support for anxiety. After all, anxiety doesn’t feel good. It can keep us up at night, bring feelings of danger, contribute to racing thoughts, cause hypervigilance, leave us feeling distracted and detached, make us feel sick, and more. The issue, though, isn’t anxiety itself, but when our brains/bodies become stuck in an anxiety cycle or interpret something as dangerous that isn’t. This isn’t our body’s fault, but instead is frequently a response to trauma, chronic stress, life circumstances, or genetic influences that can leave some brains more vulnerable to overdrive.

Framing Anxiety as an Ally

Anxiety is a physiological response that has meaning. It has purpose. It is there to protect us from danger. When we understand the function our anxiety is playing, that knowledge alerts us to what we need and can foster self-compassion. As Karen Young discusses in her book Hey Warrior, anxiety is a sign of a strong working brain (even if anxiety might be a bit overprotective). Understanding our anxiety brings us one step closer to coping with it and caring for ourselves through it. Here are a few important functions of anxiety:

• Alert us to danger
• Wake our body up and give us the energy that we need in certain situations
• Make us more aware of our surroundings, people around us, and situations (and how they are impacting us)
• Help us recognize that this situation/relationship is like one in the past that caused us harm
• Motivate us to complete the tasks we need to do
• Remind us about things that are important to us (e.g., “Don’t forget to do _____”) and move us toward taking the steps we need to take to accomplish our goals
• Bring awareness about how others are doing and propel us to care for them

Anxiety can serve important functions like giving us energy when we need it.

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The Benefit of Anxiety in Action

As noted above, anxiety plays several important functions for us. Let's consider this in action:

Christina is driving home late from work one night after having to pull long hours at the office. As she is driving home, she notices that she is feeling exhausted and having a hard time focusing her eyes on the road. When she realizes how tired she is, anxiety surfaces. She begins to breathe quickly and has thoughts and images of getting into a car accident. Christina’s first response is shame: “Why do I have to be anxious about this? I will be fine!” and “Stop it! Leave me alone!” The shame about her anxiety response only makes her feel worse. Christina then has a thought: “What if this anxiety is my body’s way of protecting me?”

You see, when Christina’s body provided an anxiety response, it flooded her body with hormones that helped wake her up (e.g., cortisol, adrenaline). This anxiety response gave her body the energy boost that it needed to wake up so that she could safely drive home. The realization of anxiety's function fostered self-compassion and then prompted Christina to respond to her needs by engaging in activities (e.g., listening to music) to wake her up and keep her alert as she drives home.

Caring for Ourselves

Without a little bit of anxiety in our lives, we might not have the energy to do what we want or be who we want to be. The challenge comes in when our nervous system has been under chronic stress and has challenges “turning off” or being in chronic “protection mode,” as I like to call it. This is distressing. Although reframing anxiety alone might not stop anxiety from surfacing, it can support us in stopping shame cycles that further perpetuate anxiety symptoms. This is only one piece of the puzzle, but as a therapist, I have seen the transformative power in reframing anxiety and understanding its purpose.

In addition to reframing your anxiety, here are some other things you can do to care for yourself:

• Get to know your anxiety. Keep a log. Notice when it comes up, why it comes up, and what it is trying to tell you/what its purpose might be.
• Identify how anxiety surfaces in your body so that when it starts to come up you can notice and care for yourself.
• Recognize that very real situations can bring chronic anxiety (e.g., financial challenges, poverty, intimate partner violence, complex trauma, war or violence, houselessness, oppression, collective trauma, anxiety disorders) and how these situations are not your fault.
• Be kind to yourself. Don’t shame or criticize your brain/body for trying to protect you. Instead, remind your nervous system that you are safe and engage in grounding exercises, move your body, or use other coping skills.
• Do research to understand the neurobiological mechanisms of anxiety (e.g., the amygdala). When you know what’s going on in your brain, it can feel less threatening and overwhelming.
• Know you’re not alone, both in feeling anxiety and in coping through it. Talk to safe people about your anxiety. Seek mental health support from a therapist or therapy group, or talk to your medical provider.

Remember that anxiety is not your enemy, but a way in which your body is trying to protect you (even if it is a bit too protective at times).