Anxiety is not a feeling. Yes, you read me correctly, anxiety is not a feeling.
Anxiety is a physiological (or body) response to emotions and stressors that you know about (known as conscious awareness) and sometimes don’t know about (known as: unconscious/subconscious/unaware).
In other words, anxiety is an inside response sometimes caused by what is happening outside you. Other times, anxiety is caused by emotions that are avoided, unknown, overwhelming, and/or difficult to understand. So basically, our body translates the feeling into anxiety so that we would *hopefully* attend to the anxiety and eventually the emotion, but this is easier said than done some times.
Here’s an example: you are walking in a parking garage late in the evening, you see a person that is near your car and you do not know them. Naturally, some people think about their approach to this person, others may think about “get in the car and lock the door quick”. This is all because of what the brain is trying to tell you: you are potentially in danger or the situation is dangerous. Then feelings like fear, sadness, anger all build inside. Depending on your previous life experiences, thoughts, or needs at the moment can all influence which feelings or experiences come up for you. Anxiety can come into the picture at this point because it is there to tell you to create a plan, and stay safe.
The bottom line is that anxiety is a response to emotions and you can soothe your anxiety by attending to your emotional experiences. When we don’t look at emotions, the body translates emotions into anxiety to prompt you to look at the emotions.
But keep in mind, there are known and unknown reasons for why we don’t engage freely with our emotions. So, focusing on the emotions can be overwhelming but that is when professional support can help you find the source and resolve anxiety through known and unknown emotions. To get started with counseling, request a call on my real-time schedule today!
Too Long/Didn’t Read: Anxiety is a response to unknown/unexplored emotions and is not a feeling by itself. Feeling anxiety is your body’s cue to check out the emotions to resolve your experience of anxiety.
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