Anxiety is Like a Box

What is the first thought that comes to your mind when you think about “anxiety”? what is the first feeling? Are you feeling heavy? Negative? Would you rather not think about it? People often think of anxiety as one thing, often coming to see us stating “I have anxiety” and wanting to eradicate it. But here, at CAYAC, we have a somewhat unusual relationship with anxiety – we love it.

Why?

First, what do we mean by anxiety? Before we go any further, we should make sure we are talking about the same thing when we use the word anxiety;

Anxiety is an emotional state that involves thought, physical symptoms in our body, and behaviour. It is usually associated with fear, worry or a sense of uneasiness and distress. Fear is an emotional response to a perceived threat; worry involves chains of negative thoughts and images that can feel difficult to control.

That distinction matters. When someone says, “I'm anxious for my vacation to start,” they may actually mean excited. Excitement and anxiety can feel surprisingly similar in the body, your heart may beat faster, you may feel keyed up and you may have trouble sitting still, but the emotional meaning is different. So let's put excitement aside for now and talk about anxiety, and this is where things get interesting.

Anxiety doesn't look the same for everyone

Anxiety pops up in different places for different people.

For some people (many people, actually) it shows up in social situations – not wanting to be the centre of attention, heart thumping when we have to give a presentation, suddenly forgetting how conversation works when meeting someone new. Or perhaps our secret crush walks by and we can't summon the courage to say “hi.” For others, that makes absolutely no sense. They don't understand why anyone would feel shy, but put them alone, at home, when, for a moment there, it feels as though no one even knows they exist, and that is when anxiety explodes.

For some people, the idea of going on a roller coaster (never mind bungee jumping) is pure horror. They know exactly what their body will do and they want no part of it. For others, that same surge of adrenaline is the whole point. They experience just enough anxiety to make the roller coaster thrilling, rather than a near-death experience.

Some people's faces turn bright red when they are anxious, an experience they find so embarrassing that they would rather disappear entirely. Others have never blushed in their lives but have experienced panic attacks (an experience that can be so frightening that, if you've never had one, it is almost impossible to imagine.)

The point is that people experience anxiety differently. It has different triggers. It can feel different in the body. It can produce different thoughts. It can lead to very different behaviours. Sometimes, we don't understand someone else's anxiety because it is so different from our own. But every so often something beautiful happens, we take what we know anxiety feels like and extrapolate from it. We recognize that another person may be experiencing something completely similar in a very different context, and this helps us understand them. That is empathy.

Does anxiety already seem not as simple? Maybe more palatable?

Anxiety severity is also highly variable. Different people experience different levels of anxiety, and even within the same person, anxiety can be extreme at times and barely noticeable at others.

Anxiety is not one-dimensional

As you can see in this graph; on one axis, we have how much anxiety someone is experiencing. On another, we have what the anxiety is about.

 Now we have two dimensions already. But why like a box? About that in our next blog ...