Befriending the Anxious Part of You
Image by Annie Spratt/Unsplash
Anxiety feels horrible. And if you struggle with chronic anxiety I’m really sorry, because it’s tough. Most people feel anxiety in their belly, but perhaps it’s also in your chest and throat, tight muscles, heart pounding or feeling breathless. Some people get pins and needles in their extremities, headaches or migraines, IBS, insomnia – feeling high levels of anxiety on a daily basis can make life miserable.
But one thing I always teach people is that anxiety is supposed to feel horrible. Because (like anger) it’s a threat-focused emotion, signalling danger, anxiety was designed by evolution to be painful, so you can’t ignore it. Imagine you’re withdrawing money from an ATM outside the bank and you get that spidey-sense tingle on the back of your neck that something’s not right. Glancing over your shoulder, you see the man behind is standing way too close, watching you enter your PIN and looking eagerly at the slot where your cash is about to emerge.
Anxiety does its job
You get a jolt of anxiety as you realise this guy is about to grab your cash so, quick as a flash you grab the money and stuff it in your bag, then walk briskly into the bank. Through the window you see the guy peering in after you, then turning and walking away. Your heart’s racing, face and palms are hot and sweaty, anxiety still churning away in your guts. You tell the security guard what just happened and he promises to check the CCTV to see if they can get the police involved.
Think about it – if you hadn’t felt that spidey-sense and the jolt of anxiety, you wouldn’t have noticed the thief and would now be a great deal poorer, or something even worse could have happened. So the anxiety did its job – keeping you safe. And this is what anxiety is for, why evolution has wired it into your brain and nervous system and, crucially, why you don’t want to get rid of it. Anxiety can, quite literally, save your life.
But this kind of anxiety is different from that chronic, everyday, background hum of anxiety that sometimes spikes when you get triggered by something. In parts-based therapies like internal family systems (IFS), we see this type of anxiety as belonging to a part of your psyche, rather than all of you. This part is usually young, vulnerable, hurt and afraid. Maybe it’s you as an eight-year-old, getting bullied at school. Or it could be younger, the five-year-old with a hot-tempered father who made you feel unsafe and hypervigilant all the time, bracing for the next rage attack.
Perhaps this anxious part of you is 13, struggling with your schoolwork because of undiagnosed dyslexia. It could be older, a 15-year-old growing up in a rough neighbourhood, just trying to stay alive and out of trouble every day.
Mostly though, these parts of us are quite young – my own anxious part, Little Dan, is about six. He really doesn’t enjoy public speaking, so I have to work with him every time I’m teaching to help him feel safe (he fears being judged and attacked by the students, however many times I teach and it all goes well).
Befriending your anxious self
I have spent years befriending Little Dan. It’s not hard, because he’s a sweet, lovable little kid. And that has helped me manage my public-speaking anxiety, because I know it’s just communication from a scared little kid – and I also know why he is scared of speaking up, because I did get bullied and shouted down a lot as a child. It totally makes sense to me, which is why I can help calm and reassure him.
But if I thought my anxiety was just annoying or somehow alien to me, as if I could banish it from my system, that would only make things worse. Because, as we saw in the example above, we can’t get rid of anxiety, even if we wanted to. Instead, by understanding it’s just a frightened little child, living in our heart and mind, we can turn towards the anxiety with curiosity and compassion. This is the central premise of IFS, or other parts-based models like schema therapy or trauma-informed stabilisation treatment.
Instead of trying to banish it we accept that anxiety is normal and, in fact, useful. We also understand that this anxiety emanates from a scared young part, not all of us – and that means there is a wise, loving, adult resource in our brain who can help calm and reassure the little one. Then we can begin to manage our day-to-day anxiety without medicating, drinking or distracting it away. And life slowly becomes calmer, steadier and more peaceful. Which is what we all want, isn’t it?
Love,
Dan ❤️
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