Beneath the symptoms of chronic anxiety

There are so many factors that contribute to anxiety. We can consider physical factors such as gut and adrenal health or lifestyle factors such as family life, job stress and general emotional resilience.

All those considerations are valid. I’ve seen many posts about each of these factors. I haven’t seen a lot of straight talk about the wound the lies buried in the people suffering from anxiety.

People with chronic anxiety suffer from not feeling safe. For most people, there’s a childhood wound that emerges from a lack of nurturing, holding and protection in their early years. It can be aggravated by too much criticism that makes the child feel like he/she is not enough.

So as an adult, you are trying to work and live your life but within you there’s a child that doesn’t feel like she is enough and doesn’t trust that the world is a safe place. This fear leads to controlling behaviours. When we don’t trust things to be okay, we try and make them okay. We try and prepare, plan and arrange until we create chronic contraction.

Chronic contraction leads to either pain in the body or anxiety in the mind or both. The most profound remedy is learning to let go. It isn’t easy. It isn’t something that you can tell an anxious person to just do. “Just relax”, isn’t helpful. If she weren’t anxious she would relax. Because she’s anxious she can’t relax.

How do we intervene in this cycle and provide relief?

If you didn’t get adequate nurturing as a child, you need to learn how to give it to yourself as an adult. There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with you. You didn’t receive the essential building blocks to mental health and resilience as a child. To heal, you need to fill in those gaps.

It’s a big job but step-by-step with the right support, you can do it. I’ve been working my whole adult life to ground the anxiety that has plagued the women in my family for generations. I know it can be done.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments.