What Is Anxiety?

What is anxiety, and why do we feel it in our bodies? Jim describes anxiety as the body's alarm system, there to keep us safe, and explains why it can misread situations and leave people anxious much of the time. He lists common physical signs, such as a faster heartbeat, sweaty palms and warmth or tightness in the chest or head, and says noticing them is a good moment to breathe, take time out, rest or reach out to someone. He also shares his first clear memory of feeling anxious, at a school dance. This content is educational and is not a substitute for one-to-one professional care.

Transcript

Well, What is anxiety? Good question. I like to think of anxiety as our body's alarm system. It lets us know when something's not right. When we're potentially in danger. When something that is harmful potentially going to happen. The challenge with anxiety is that it often misinterprets, It often misunderstands situations, And we can end up being chronically anxious, Which is not what anxiety is typically designed for. It's supposed to be there to keep you alive, To keep you safe. Should something come to threaten you, Should something be coming that you need to pay attention to more closely, Etc. Ideally, A person should not be anxious all the time. It kind of defeats the purpose. If there's an alarm system and it's on all the time, You generally just don't pay much attention to it or overly focus on it. So, If that makes sense. You know, The details of what happens with anxiety are pretty well known. I mean, We all have different sort of reactions. Some of us get, You know, Our heart starts going a bit. Some of us have, You know, Sweaty palms. Some of us sweat in general. Some of us just feel, You know, A tightness in our skin. I just feel, I kind of feel a warmness in my chest, A tightness sometimes in my head. The range of what we can experience with either through what we would call somatic-type symptoms, Like the body is responding a certain way, Are things we're going to cover and talk about when you start to notice them. That's a good time to understand that you need to provide yourself with some sort of intervention for the anxiety. Sometimes we are not necessarily aware. Of what is happening. And in the same way that when I work with things like anger, We need to understand when there's changes happening in our body so that we can do some deep breathing. Take time out for meditation, Step back from whatever it is we're doing, And perhaps, You know, Rethink an activity, Rethink whatever we may be doing. Maybe we need to reduce stress. Maybe we need to rest more. Maybe we need to reach out to a friend or a therapist or a parent. So being able to be aware of what's going on and when this is kicking in is really key to obviously, You know, Providing some type of intervention. Sometimes when I talk about anxiety, I give a little story about where I first understood or first discovered anxiety. I think I was probably about 12 or 13, Probably about 12. I was in junior high, I think grade seven. And that was my first year of junior high. And that was my first year, To my knowledge, That we had school dances. So as you can imagine, This as a as an introverted, Highly kind of not highly anxious, But I was an anxious person, Young person. I was not looking forward to this. I felt a lot of social pressure that I would have to ask girls to dance. I didn't want to do that. I felt quite uncomfortable about it. But what was important was that when I look back on it, I didn't really understand what anxiety was. I don't think I even knew what the word I knew about the word anxiety. I probably would have characterized it as feeling uncomfortable or nervous. And the key for me in terms of why I'm sharing this with you is that I remember identifying this discomfort in my body. The minute I thought to go and ask a girl to dance, Where I thought I should ask a girl to dance, My body started feeling really uncomfortable. I felt like my feet had lead weights on them. I couldn't move them. And so I developed these strategies. Or I tried a strategy anyways, That I thought would help me. It sounds kind of funny when I think about it now. I basically did this sort of countdown with myself where I said, OK, I'm going to ask a girl to dance at the count of three. So I do one, Two, Three, And I wouldn't move. And then I try it again. One, Two, Three, And I wouldn't move. And I did this for probably an hour or so until I finally gave up. And I remember really clearly feeling a lot of also social pressure around me. People looking at me and me assuming that they were thinking I should be asking someone to dance. Why is he not asking someone to dance? And it's probably unlikely they were thinking anything about me, But I was fixated on that. So that's my first clear memory of sort of being No, I know debilitating is a strong word maybe, But I feel relatively debilitated at that time. I was not able to do what I wanted to do. And it wasn't until much later. . . That two or three years later that I had a similar experience. And someone had offered me alcohol and then I noticed a big difference because once I had alcohol in my system the anxiety was lessened and I was able to do what I wanted to do. Now, That sounds on the surface great, But using alcohol to manage anxiety is not a good idea.