Lorazepam, diazepam, sertraline, CBD, or ashwagandha\u2013the industry for \u201celiminating\u201d anxiety is massive. Social media is flooded with promises to get rid of anxiety once and for all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But these so-called \u201ctreatments\u201d fail because they ignore one fundamental premise: anxiety is an emotion, and emotions cannot be eliminated. They can only be regulated.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what is an emotion?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Put simply, emotions are labels. They are words that we use to identify specific physical sensations and thoughts related to specific experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For instance, if a massive, furry, spider crawls towards you, your heart races, your pupils dilate and thoughts of your incoming doom are likely to arise. In the same way, your heart may also start to beat fast and your pupils dilate as you see the love of your life walk down the aisle on your wedding day. While both scenarios trigger dilated pupils and an increased heart rate, the labels we use to describe them are very different. One is tied to fear while the other is tied to love and excitement. Emotions are simply the labels<\/strong> that we use to interpret and to communicate<\/strong> our bodily sensations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What about anxiety?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Anxiety is an anticipatory fear of what may or may not happen.<\/strong>This is why we experience anxiety before presenting a school project, before having a tense conversation with a friend or while getting ready for a first date. Anxiety is not focused on what actually happens, but instead what may happen.<\/em> This is why, in my consultation, you may encounter the following question: do you think or do you know?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Essentially, anxiety could not care less about reality.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Why do I experience it?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Emotions are learned through classical conditioning. In layman\u2019s terms: emotions are a result of pairing events and physiological reactions that occur simultaneously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let's go back to the school presentation example. Imagine you are standing at the front of the class, you lose your train of thought and see your professor\u2019s judgemental expression. You immediately feel flushed, your heart pounds against your chest and your hands begin to sweat. Those physical sensations are a natural, unlearned reaction to a sudden and stressful event. Since these details occurred together, you pair a previously neutral situation (public speaking) with the very real threat of embarrassment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fast forward two weeks, your teacher merely mentions another upcoming project. All of the sudden your chest tightens, your palms start to sweat and your breathing gets shallow. Why? Your brain recognizes that cue, firing off the physical alarm system to prepare you for danger. You aren\u2019t reacting to present threat; you are reacting to a conditioned memory.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Why does it feel like it\u2019s taking over?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In behavioral psychology, there is a concept of generalization.<\/em><\/strong>We are excellent at finding patterns\u2013once a child learns what a \u201cdog\u201d is, they can easily apply that label to a Beagle or a Bulldog. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But with anxiety, your brain adopts a strict \"better safe than sorry\" policy. What starts as a specific fear of classroom presentation soon triggers when you are asked to read aloud from your desk, or when you raise your hand. You widen the criteria for the alarm and end up experiencing anxiety in an increasingly wide circle of situations, all because your are unconsciously trying to protect yourself from a threat that hasn\u2019t happened yet\u2013and may not even exist.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Therefore, I like to say that anxiety is a poorly-wired alarm system that fires off at the wrong time.<\/strong>Therefore, the goal isn\u2019t to smash the alarm\u2013it\u2019s to recalibrate. You aren\u2019t broken, you\u2019re just overfunctioning to protect yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that we\u2019ve demystified what anxiety is and where it comes from, the next step is looking under the hood. In the next article, we will break down why it feels like you\u2019re trapped in a never-ending loop\u2013and more importantly, how to break out of it.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A poorly-wired alarm system, not a defect.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"default","_twitter_share_type":"default","_linkedin_share_type":"default","_pinterest_share_type":"default","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"default","_medium_share_type":"default","_threads_share_type":"default","_google_business_share_type":"default","_bluesky_share_type":"","_mastodon_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ansiedad-y-estres","category-depresion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nodocontextual.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nodocontextual.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nodocontextual.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nodocontextual.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nodocontextual.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nodocontextual.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nodocontextual.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nodocontextual.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nodocontextual.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nodocontextual.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}