What is Anxiety and Why Do We Have It?
Wouldn’t it be great if we could just feel contentment, happiness, love, and peace? Unfortunately, it’s just one of our 4 basic emotions. This means that it’s unavoidable.
Addictions are related to struggles with coping with difficult emotions. Anxiety is one of these emotions that addicts can struggle to manage. Whether it’s sex addiction, substance abuse, or love addiction, anxiety can play a role in the problematic behaviors, as well as the relapse prevention planning that’s involved. Thus, it’s incredibly important to learn about this feeling, why it happens, and how to manage it. Otherwise, it will continue to derail your recovery.
Isn’t it just mind over matter?
It’s hard to know how to cope with anxiety. There is a large range of how anxiety can impact you. For some, it’s just the experience of those nervous feelings in your stomach or a short, but passing period of racing thoughts.
Others can really get stuck in these feelings. There can be a lot of worry that something bad is about to happen—even when there’s no real reason to feel that way. The anxiousness can turn into obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. If this is familiar to you, you may avoid more and more things, hoping that the feelings of fear will decrease.
The search for ways to calm these intense feelings can lead you into a vicious circle where you look for short-term comfort, but create longer term problems. The lack of social support, life experiences and connections, and procrastination all can increase the sense of anxiety that you’re experiencing. Then if you use a numbing tool (as many do) to help you cope with anxiety, you will still have to deal with their problematic outcomes.
I want to ensure you that there is hope. Over the years, I’ve seen many people learn how to manage these feelings while expanding and living their lives in a meaningful way. Although anxiety can get so intense that it can lead to panic attacks, complete isolation, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, it can also be treated by helping you learn new skills and understand the emotions and how they come and go.
Understanding the Role of Anxiety
I know it’s not really a consolation, but anxiety serves an important role in our lives. It alerts you to important things like threats and boundaries. It’s hard to keep this in mind and appreciate that anxiety does this for you when it’s coming with too much intensity for what a moment deserves. However, when you know that there are legitimate reasons why anxiety exists, you’ll view it less like an enemy. Understanding your anxious feelings also can remind you that you’re normal, not alone, and that things can change over time. If you go to war with any of your emotions, they’re likely to get more and more intense. If you gain knowledge about them and their origins, they’re much more likely to come and go, decreasing in overall intensity.
The Connection Between Control and Anxiety
A sense of control is something we all look for to feel safe and secure. When we feel like we have control, we trust that we can handle whatever life throws at us. However, when something messes with that sense of control, anxiety tends to follow. This makes sense because control can feel powerful. Our brains like predictability—they want to know what’s coming next and be prepared for it.
Unfortunately, life just doesn’t cooperate with this. Stuff happens that we can’t control or predict. We can’t control what’s going to happen next or what people think or feel about us. Although we can influence these things. When things feel uncertain or out of our hands, anxiety ramps up as a way to brace for the worst. Anticipating for the worst can be burdensome and debilitating.
Feelings like self-consciousness and worry about your future can lead to struggles at home, at work, and in your social life. For example, you might find that you avoid things, overthink how people perceive you, or obsess about stuff at home and at work. This can take away from your connections and ability to live your life.
Don’t worry, I’ll be discussing some ways for you to deal with these realities. I won’t leave you hanging. However, before I get into that, I want you to understand your anxiety so you can understand that this is normal. Also, the more you understand your feelings, the easier it’ll be to deal with these things.
Addiction and Anxiety: Numbing the Pain
Anxiety can become increasingly intense and difficult to cope with. It’s natural to look for ways to cope with these intense feelings. One of the ways we cope with painful stuff is to numb ourselves. Numbing is normal in many ways. It can give you a temporary sense of relief or escapism. The issue is when we over-rely on this style of coping.
Numbing can become a spiral. When you realize it works to use things to numb yourself, you can overuse that behavior. After all, when you’re done numbing yourself, the situations are still there and thus, so are the feelings. Whether it’s over-using alcohol, drugs, porn, gambling, or food, these things can provide temporary relief from anxiety. However, they don’t address the root causes of your feelings or your problems. In fact, they can create even bigger problems down the line. What furthers this spiral is that these behaviors numb you in the moment. You have choices throughout each day whether to deal with the difficulties of the situations or problems or to numb yourself. Many people choose the path of numbing and that pattern can continue until more time is spent numbing and craving numbness, while issues in your personal life mount up.
Addictive behaviors are often a form of self-medication–a way to feel in control or at least escape feeling out of control. Our lives are filled with numbing agents and anxiety that increase the likelihood of you using these things in a compulsive way. Whether it’s substance abuse or sex or porn addictions, it can be critical to learn new ways of managing your anxiety.
Social Anxiety for Those in Recovery
There are several types of anxiety that can impact people, but social anxiety is one that can really create long-term problems for people who are in recovery. You’ll need the support of others to manage your addiction. However, it’s difficult and vulnerable to lean on others.
When addictive behaviors are at their worst, it’s also common to be living your life with quite a bit of isolation. Sometimes this is directly related to the addictive behavior, but it’s also something that I’ve just noticed correlates with my clients’ lives in these situations. It’s hard to know what came first, the addictive behavior or the isolation. Some clients just got busy in their day-to-day lives. Others forgot about the importance of friendship and just lost touch with people they cared about. Then there are those who get tired of dishonesty and the addiction itself, so they pull away.
Social anxiety can often emerge from this disconnection because you have to really put yourself out there again to build new friendships. People can feel really anxious about looking foolish. This can create some serious insecurities and self-doubt. Unfortunately, this anxiety can even get severe enough that it transforms into a full-on fear, which then leads to avoidance of taking the social chances needed to reconnect with others.
Others develop their social anxieties years before their addictive behaviors even emerged. It’s pretty common for people to have a core group of friends that feel safe. However, people move on in their own lives and things change. This can be really difficult for some people who struggle with making social connections and trusting other people.
Social anxiety is one of the most common types of anxiety, but it’s often confused with being shy. While both involve feeling uncomfortable in social situations, they’re not the same thing. Social anxiety is much more overwhelming. The intense fear of being judged, embarrassed, or humiliated in social settings leads to avoidance.
Recognizing and Managing Anxiety-Driven Behaviors
It’s important to develop behavioral plans and goals to change addictive patterns. However, you also have to explore the root causes of your addiction. Unmanaged, overwhelming anxiety can be one of those root causes. If you don’t recognize your anxiety and learn about what causes it, you’re much more likely to continue the same behaviors.
Some people can easily identify emotions and how they feel in their bodies. Others really struggle with this.
Emotions tend to feel similarly in our bodies. As a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, I regularly work on helping clients identify and follow the feeling experiences and sensations in their bodies. As a therapist who works in this way with clients, I can tell you that it’s common for people to really struggle with this.
It’s usually pretty easy to tell whether or not you’re someone who can identify what anxiety is like in your body. If you can identify this, then you can start practicing using some skills to manage your anxiety.
If you’re someone who can’t identify anxiety in your body, I recommend you identify some signs that are associated with anxiety. This can help you build some associations with problematic behaviors and then go from there. Using coping strategies won’t harm you. So watch for either the feelings associated with anxiety or the behaviors associated with it, then deploy coping strategies to counter them.
Here are a few signs that anxiety might be influencing you:
Avoidance: If you find that you’re avoiding situations, people, or tasks, anxiety is a likely culprit. While avoidance might make you feel better in the moment, but it often leads to more anxiety in the long run because avoidance doesn’t solve problems.
Chip away at tasks and celebrate your achievements. Start opening yourself up to more vulnerable situations and conversations.
Self-Medicating to Numb: Are you using substances like alcohol, drugs, or food to cope with anxiety? Do you find that you’re numbing with porn, sex, or just the internet. You may feel better during the behavior. The behavior may distract you from the intensity of your feelings, but it eliminate them. Ironically, it can create a sling shot effect because it just puts the anxiety to the side, where it continues to build rather than discharges. In these situations it can come back with a vengeance which means you’ll be even more reliant on the numbing.
Overthinking and Obsessing: If you’re constantly trying to mind read, predict the future, and people please, it can seem like a good way of trying to regain control. However, there’s no real way to do these things. In other words, you’re buying into an illusion of control more than real control. the practice is learning how to accept a lack of control and embracing connections.
Practical Tips for Managing Anxiety
Exchange unhealthy patterns for healthier ones: Exercise, a better diet, more positive social interactions, and sleep can go a long way in helping you feel better. Focus on making small changes rather than broad, immediate sweeping changes. These can mount up and make a difference over time.
Practice mindfulness: This isn’t meditation right away. It may surprise you, but meditation doesn’t always decrease anxiety. Instead, learning about feelings in your body, and learning how to get them to spread out and disperse can go a long way. Somatic experiencing and integral psychology can be helpful.
Appreciate achievements: Appreciating achievements is one of the most overlooked ways of improving anxiety that gets missed. If you don’t look for it, you may miss small achievements. Big, long-term goals can be easy to spot. However, we don’t get there without making small day-to-day changes. It’s crucial that you take time to identify what you’re doing better or how and when you’re feeling better, or you’re likely going to miss it. Missing it means you won’t take time to appreciate it.
If you spent some time with friends, appreciate that. If you’re committing to some healthier habits, appreciate that. If you notice a little less anxiety in a certain situation, try to take inventory of that.
I recommend taking an inventory at least a few days a week. This can help you recap on your day and look for possible successes. Write them down so you can also look through your journal when you feel extra stuck.
Challenge negativity: Learn to catch and challenge negative thought patterns that feed your anxiety. One rule is to check on your thoughts and ask if they’re based in fact. One way to test this is to ask yourself, what would be undeniable if you were watching footage of the situation?
You can also look for stories that you finish without the facts. We’re kind of wired to finish stories, and we even do this with limited information. Unfortunately, we rarely fill these gaps in with positive or even neutral information. Look for these stories.
Another strategy is to catch your thoughts and ask yourself if they’re helping you reach your goals in your life and relationships. If they aren’t, focus on countering them.
Limit numbing behaviors: If you notice yourself turning to substances or unhealthy behaviors to cope, try finding healthier alternatives like exercising, picking up a hobby, or talking to a friend. We all escape at times. You want to look for excessive time spent on these numbing behaviors and focus on limiting and being more mindful. Create spaces for the hedonistic behaviors as long as that doesn’t go against your boundaries or your relationship boundaries. For example, go and enjoy that rich tasting meal. Enjoy quality sexual exploration with your partner. Exchange numbness for pleasure.
Get support:You need support. We all need it. Finding groups of people who can support you can help you with your behaviors. It can also be helpful when the attempts you’ve made to change fail. Unfortunately, that will happen at times. If you’ve lost touch with old friends, make an effort to reconnect. If you need to build new connections, look for people and groups who have similar interests.
Taking mindful risks.In order to make changes, you’re going to need to take some risks. I just want those risks to be calculated. This won’t guarantee you won’t fail. However, being mindful will help you be considerate of those around you while you’re trying to make changes. If you have a history of being impulsive, it will also keep you from making those choices.
When to Seek a Therapist for Anxiety or Addictions
Sometimes, anxiety becomes too much to handle on your own. If it’s starting to interfere with your daily life, relationships, or work, it might be time to seek help from a therapist. A professional can offer tools to help you build a plan around your addictive behaviors, give you a space of accountability, and also help you enhance your anxiety management skills.
If you’re in Texas and looking for a therapist or Dallas and looking for a therapist who is offering in-person sessions, please feel to contact us to see how we can help.