Anxiety and the need for Safety

Anxiety is fear. Whenever we’re feeling anxious there’s a part of us that doesn’t feel safe even if it’s not clear why that is the case. It may be a simple situation, walking in the street or going to a party but the anxiety rises us for no apparent reason. It’s uncomfortable to not know why we feel anxious and this not knowing can lead to more internal negativity and questions like why am I feeling this way? What’s wrong with me? How do I get rid of it?

These questions are totally understandable, we have these uncomfortable feeling that we don’t know what to do with and that make no sense to us. We don’t know how to fix them. So we go to therapy to try to find out how to fix our symptoms and some therapies do address this directly with techniques such as controlled breathing, attempting to change negative thinking and tools for sleeping better etc. All of this is valuable and helpful but for many people this isn’t enough. They want to go deeper and find the root cause of these difficult feelings that stop you from living life to the full.

So what does it mean to go deeper? It means to explore the underlying reasons why we feel anxious and to understand how anxiety works. If I’m having a lot of anxious thinking such as what if this or that happens and I can’t cope? I’m bound to feel worse because it’s like having a person stood next to me telling me I won’t be able to cope with that happens which will scare me even more. So it’s vitally important to understand the role of your thoughts in the anxious patterns.

Then there is the anxious feeling itself. Understandably we will try to get rid of the discomfort by any means possible, distraction, self medicating with drugs or alcohol, over or under eating, controlling behaviours etc. These behaviours will work temporarily, that’s why we do them but often the anxiety will return maybe worse than before. When we do this we are avoiding our feelings.

There is a very important aspect of anxiety that can be difficult to understand. Whatever the circumstance we are in right now if we are feeling anxious and there isn’t an obvious cause such as being in an exam then its fair to say that there is a part of us that doesn’t feel safe.

Parts of ourselves that don’t feel safe need to be soothed not got rid of. Imagine a child is in your care and is scared. If you tell that child to go away what will be the result? Most likely that child will not trust you or feel safe with you. It’s like that with the anxious parts of ourselves.

Many types of therapy are effective in treating anxiety but to heal more fully and deeply we must get to know the anxious parts of ourselves so we can help them to feel safe. It requires a commitment to face our difficult feelings with courage, determination and most of all patience. There are no quick fixes here, for people who are traumatised by past experiences this journey can be long and arduous but it is also the road to freedom and the liberation of your authentic self so you can transmute your suffering into empowerment and live the life you want to live. For this to happen, we must become safe spaces to ourselves.