by reetaluthra
Q&A: What Causes Stress and Anxiety?
8:05 pm in Ask Reeta by reetaluthra
Reader Question:
I don’t even know where to start with my anxiety. I would have to ask something about my anxiety – the cause of it, what to do to help it, etc.
Stress and Anxiety are early warning systems letting you know that there’s something going on that needs attention.
The Cause of Stress and Anxiety
Stress is an impulse that’s based on our in-built fight-or-flight response. It’s a survival instinct passed down through the ages.
Stress hormones, such as adrenalin, sharpen our senses, close down non-urgent biological functions and give us extra energy and alertness so we can deal with whatever threat has come up. Originally, this could have meant running away from wild animals or fighting warring tribes coming to steal our food.
The trouble is that this fight-or-flight response has not kept up with evolution. Many modern threats are psychological – divorce, redundancy, mind games, traffic jams, sales targets etc. Running away or staying to fight is not really the most appropriate response to these modern threats. But the stress hormones are still preparing your body for fight or flight – you might have noticed for example how your appetite disappears when you are anxious.
Stress is only meant to a temporary, short-term measure, and when we can’t find a way to deal with a modern threat, our body continues in its primitive stress mode waiting for us to do something. The longer you leave the stress to fester and accumulate, the more impact the stress hormones have on your health, behaviours and decisions.
How To Help Yourself Through Stress
Bearing in mind that the stress and anxiety you feel is a warning of some kind, your primary objective is to discover what this warning is about so that you can do something about it. The following series of steps can help isolate the thoughts that are at the root of your anxiety.
When you’ve been holding stress and anxiety for a long time, it might have become a jumbled-up feeling that’s hard to put words to. If this has happened to you, you can still take yourself through these steps, but be aware that you may have to go through them several times over a number of days. Treat the process with curiosity to make it easier to manage.
- Write down the thoughts that are whirling through your mind while you are stressed or anxious. If you can’t capture all of them, that’s fine – just write down the ones that you are aware of. Note where in your body you are feeling this tension. Who are you thinking about. Who are you hearing?
- Take temporary stress relief measures such as exercise, massage and dance etc in order to give your mind some thinking space.
- When you have this thinking space, go over the list of thoughts you wrote down and see if you get any new insights or if you can see which patterns of thought could do with further exploring.
- Think about what beliefs, personal limitations etc are stopping you from breaking your thought patterns (e.g. I’ve left all my friends behind, I really am alone here)
- Think about what unwanted behaviours these thought patterns are creating (e.g. self harming or panic attacks)
- What new thoughts or skills do you need in order to move yourself out of this cycle?
- In what way are new thoughts and skills self-attainable or do you need help to achieve them?
- Take the action that you have identified in Step 7.
How do you recognise the stresses and anxieties that you face?
About Reeta Luthra (DHP, MNLP, EFT-Adv)
Reeta Luthra specialises in the effects of stress on health, emotions and behaviours and provides international telecoaching to help people address the impact of stress on their health. She helps look after your mind so that your mind can look after you. To find out more, visit Reeta Luthra: Stress and Your Health
Can you imagine us fighting to the death over sale items?
I love that every time I read one of your Q&A’s, I learn something new!
Sometimes, it takes me a long time to recognize when I’m stressed. When I do realize it, it’s usually because I’ve already had a nervous breakdown. I’ve been trying to avoid that by decreasing the amount of “stuff” I take onto my plate; my biggest stressor is caused by myself taking on too much, until it’s too late to realize I’ve done so. I know this, but it’s sort of become an addiction and the habit has been quite hard to break!
Hi Elizabeth – sales can get a bit ugly can’t they?!
Lots of people don’t recognise their stress until it has accumulated – for a few days, try taking an “inventory” of your body and feelings a few times throughout the day even when you are *not* stressed.
This could help you become more in tune with yourself so you can take some action before it all gets too much.
Reeta, your advice is so helpful, not only to me but to many others who let stress take over. I think giving yourself the space to not only write it down but reflect on it later is such good advice. We replay anxiety over and over until it grows larger than the original problem or concern. Digesting it in this way would make us much more effective.
Hi Julie – so sorry, only just seen your comment!
I’m really pleased you found this useful. You’re right about that replaying anxiety paradox. In fact there are several NLP techniques designed to reduce the impact and intensity of the “movies” that we play in our minds.