What caused my anxiety?

People who come to see me about their anxiety often want to know what caused their anxiety to start in the first place.

If you struggle with anxiety, you may have wondered why you have the anxiety. Where did it come from? And how can I say goodbye to the anxiety so I can start feeling better and getting on with my life?

In my experience there are two broad types of anxiety.

The first is anxiety brought on from a specific (usually traumatic) event. For example, suppose you are driving along quite happily one day in the same way you have for years and then ‘bang’ you are involved in an accident.

It’s possible (although by no means certain) that you may have been a bit shaken up or even injured. You may find yourself thinking about or re-living the incident in your mind. And you may start to feel anxious about driving (whether as a driver, passenger or even just linked to certain roads).

And the more you experience your anxiety and avoid situations that make it worse, the more the anxiety can take hold and limit your choices.

The second type of anxiety can often be very disconcerting for those who experience it. Sometimes the anxiety seems to come out of nowhere, even when nothing particular was happening. It’s like a delayed reaction to how you have been living your life.

The tension, thoughts and feelings just kick in and then it seems to keep happening more and more as you notice it spreading into other areas of your life.

Often what happens is that you have been stressed and/or anxious for some time and that final time is the tipping point.

You may not have been handling everyday stresses very effectively, you may have experienced life changes that you needed to adjust to or maybe your own thoughts and feelings have been stressing you out (e.g. anger, guilt, low confidence, self-criticism, ignoring your own needs etc.).

Then one day that internal stress gets too much and your anxiety starts. Often it is then attached to whatever you were doing at that time, rather than recognising that it was created from how you had been living your life in the months before that time.

And before you know it you have developed your anxiety habit – letting it decide what you can and can’t do, anticipating when and how it will next strike, and worrying about how it will happen next.

The good news about anxiety...

Whatever the original cause of your anxiety, the good news is that there are ways to let go of all your anxiety, whatever caused it to start.

As one client said to me recently – “I used to think about my anxiety more than 30 times a day. Even when it wasn’t there I was waiting for it to come back. I was so focussed on my internal anxiety that I neglected my partner and friends. Now I only think about it every so often, if at all and it doesn’t really seem like much of an issue” Mike, Ely

That first step…

The first thing that I suggest you do is find ways to start to relax. It may sound simple but if you have anxiety then you probably already struggle to properly relax.

Even if you only start with a couple of minutes here and there, the fact of relaxing will help you start the process of taking back control over how you feel.

And I’ll cover more about ways to relax in my next article.

Until then, with best wishes

Dan Regan