How Does Stress Turn Into Anxiety and What To Do About It

The stress response occurs automatically when your body and mind perceive some kind of threat. This is the primitive “flight-fight” response. Often your subconscious mind, emotions and body “see” things differently than your conscious mind.“ This can occur whenever you feel overwhelmed or there is an imminent danger facing you. It can also occur when you feel emotionally overwhelmed or threatened. This means that it can occur when you feel shame, embarrassment, unworthiness, “smallness”, or overwhelm. The stress response is an automatic “call to action” where your entire mind and body become highly alert and ready for emergency action.

Because our mind is always thinking and trying to interpret the events in our lives, we attribute meaning to the stress and we immediately seek to solve the problem. When the problem is solvable through either fight or flight or through focusing on a particular task or activity then the stress will subside quickly and will give way to determined focused action to solve the problem. When the problem is not clear; the sense of feeling overwhelmed is not clearly solvable, or the emotions involved are triggered by emotional memories from earlier events in your life, then the problem becomes unsolvable by engaging in straightforward action. In these cases your mind starts feverishly trying to figure out a solution….but often there is no clear solution. This can yield all the symptoms associated with anxiety, including increased body tension, blood pressure and heart rate, loss of focus and a feeling like all you can do is just freeze and think and ruminate. Anxiety almost always starts with some bodily signs such as tension, increased heartbeat etc. but it quickly moves into the area of overthinking; rumination and an inability to concentrate and focus clearly. When all these symptoms come together you experience what we call anxiety.

Anxiety has the potential of generating all kinds of painful and debilitating over thinking, particularly when there’s not a clear solution to the problem. One of the areas this shows very often is the area of significant relationships, financial pressures, work or health. For instance, when significant relationships are interpreted to be in jeopardy this is interpreted as a very threatening situation; one that is often very difficult to address. There’s another person or persons involved and you can’t just apply straightforward action. In the case of a significant other, if you know what to do when this happens, such as relaxing, focusing and paying attention to your partner and repairing the relationship then things can turn around quickly. But when this situation leads to other emotions like shame, anger, resentment etc. and you will tend to be more isolated and more in your head about it and this can cause further problems in the relationship. 

Anxiety is closely related and in some ways the opposite of confidence. Confidence is when you feel solid; with your feet on the ground and your emotions and mind clear, you can attend to the things you need to do in order to be happy and lead a full, healthy and productive life. When these things are in jeopardy, anxiety is likely to be triggered. First comes the instinctive stress response and then away goes your mind towards increased overthinking. When you know how to calm down the initial stress response, you are able to refocus and concentrate and feel less threatened by your own emotions and your own previously automatic reactions to things. This then allows you to gain confidence to deal with a variety of situations. This is called resilience.

When you develop patterns where one overwhelming situation seems to lead to another and you start losing confidence in your ability to cope with life; to cope with relationships, health and emotions, then you can develop a chronic generalized anxiety that can become difficult to understand, scary and self-limiting. Therapy is generally aimed at developing a greater understanding of oneself and one's situation; self awareness and emotional intelligence. Talking with a therapist about your issues brings another perspective and allows your mind to receive new information and new ways of looking at things; this with the goal of unblocking log jams in the way you look at things, yielding an opportunity for growth and creativity in dealing with your issues.  An important part of therapy is also the development of techniques and practices such as meditation, mindfulness, and other mind-body techniques. These are effective to calm the body and mind and tame the stress response that almost always initiates anxiety. I particularly like mindfulness based breathing, Other similar techniques such as yoga based breathing, meditation and regular exercise can be valuable as well. 

An integrated approach to managing excessive stress, anxiety and most other mental health issues, includes understanding and practicing mindfulness, cognitive therapy, and one or more of these mind-body practices. This fosters a real change in the way your body and mind process stress. It yields life-changing attitudes and practices that reduce anxiety, living “in your head”, and feeling overwhelmed and stressed, and leads to the development of real confidence, energy, increased health, vitality, and a truly meaningful and fulfilling life.