Healing Root Causes of Anxiety
Breaking free
Anxiety is a normal part of life. Ideally it rises and falls in a natural way. When it is persistent, however, it can be limiting because the discomfort tends to make life smaller and more rigid. As healing happens, more of life becomes available. Some people do not realize how much they suffer with anxiety until it starts to heal and they finally feel relief.
If you have anxiety, you may....
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Feel it in Your Body
You may feel your heart pounding or a sinking feeling. You may feel buzzing, humming, or tension. You may fidget or feel jumpy.
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Have Looping Thoughts
You may have racing thoughts or the same thought process over and over. These thoughts tend to increase the feelings of anxiety.
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Catastrophic Thinking
You may have a tendency to play out worst-case scenarios. You may feel preoccupied with things that could go wrong.
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Feel Restless & Irritable
Many experience anxiety as restlessness or irritability. Some just have a felt sense that something is wrong. They feel discontent regardless of outside circumstances.
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Find it Hard to be Present
Anxiety can make it hard to be present and available in life and relationships. This is because the focus tends to be on what might happen as opposed to being here now.
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Insomnia or Difficulty Relaxing
Some experience catastrophic thinking or panic of an unknown origin when they begin to relax. This can be a sign of unresolved trauma that needs healing in the nervous system.
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Feel Exhausted and Unwell
Anxiety can prevent the body from recharging and repairing properly. It can also make you strive so hard in life and relationships that you hit a wall of exhaustion.
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Want to Avoid or Numb
From working non-stop, to being really intellectual, to binge watching, to scrolling on a device, to serious addictions. Many engage in behaviors to avoid having to feel.
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Feel Misunderstood & Alone
Anxiety often makes it hard to send clear signals about needs and emotions in relationships. As a result it can be hard to feel seen, heard, and understood.
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Go Quiet or Overcommunicate
Some people have a hard time speaking up when they are anxious. Others speak faster and over communicate. Both patterns can make it hard to feel heard and understood.
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Have Boundary Issues
Anxiety may cause good people to cope in ways that overstep boundaries. Boundaries may also be too loose because it is hard to set them or too rigid as a way to avoid discomfort.
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Have Tried Lots of Remedies
There are tons of options out there for lessening anxiety that do not actually heal the root cause.
Anxiety is energy that often masks deeper wounding.
What you are anxious about is real and it matters, but it may not be the whole story
It’s important to bring love and compassion to anxious parts of yourself. Many times the reason the anxiety gets stuck and does not regulate is because there is wounding due to trauma or emotional hurts held deep within. This wounding causes a blockage energetically which holds the anxiety in place and prevents it from naturally falling away. For some, this blockage may involve the nervous system going into fight / flight / freeze mode. For others, it may be a deep emotional wound. I’ve found that until these deeper blocks of energy are healed it can be hard to find lasting relief, even if you spend lots of time talking about your anxiety, understanding it, and finding tools to cope with it.
You may not know what you’re anxious about. It could be free floating in your system for no apparent reason.
In some cases, this kind of free floating anxiety may be the result of very early trauma. Somatic trauma healing can be particularly helpful with this kind of anxiety because we do not need to know the story of the anxiety in order to heal and release it.
Sometimes, particularly with highly sensitive people and empaths, anxious energy can also be picked up that does not belong to you. It may be something you feel in someone else. I love helping people learn to listen to these signals, get in touch with their own sensitivities, and find ways to discern these nuances while honoring their gifts.
Anxiety may be a sign that your body and mind are working very hard - perhaps too hard.
It’s like being in overdrive. Imagine having the gas pedal full throttle in your body day after day. This is why years of anxiety can really take a toll. Many clients have a sense that living with anxiety is impacting their health and research shows this to be true.
Anxiety may be a sign that relationships are painful
Attachment science tells us that we are all wired for connection. Life can be very challenging and we are not meant to cope and survive in isolation. Anxiety can therefore come when folks feel insecure in relationships. Often times, this started at a young age.
Anxiety can be like a feedback loop - it can come when feeling unsure of connection with others, and the anxiety itself also makes it harder to connect. This leads to - you guessed it - more anxiety.
Some people cope by pursuing connection with an anxious or critical flavor which can have a tendency to push people away. Others give up on their needs for connection and isolate. Many have both of these patterns depending on who they are interacting with.
Healing these blocks in relationships can be an important part of healing anxiety.
Many good people cope with anxiety by trying to manage and control things, including loved ones. They exert themselves until they hit a wall of frustration and exhaustion. The heartbreaking part is this extra effort tends to create the very problems they are trying to avoid.
*There is hope*
Healing Anxiety
Anxiety can be like a protective outer shell for wounding held in the nervous system or emotions. This means that there are different ways to work with anxiety. You can find ways to soften the shell, or you can do the deeper healing work to clear out the wounding that causes the anxiety to be there in the first place. This causes anxiety to come back less often and to resolve quicker when it does come back. Many people find it helpful, when they are ready, to heal the root causes of their anxiety.
Healing Anxiety with Somatic Trauma Work
Brainspotting, Somatic IFS, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, and EMDR are somatic and brain-based trauma tools I use to work with anxiety because sometimes it is necessary to access deeper parts of the brain and body for healing. Some people benefit from learning skills to manage anxiety in the body because going to the deeper wounds is not possible right away. Other somatic tools are for healing the root cause of the anxiety and will lead to the most relief.
I’ve learned several of these tools because I’ve found that one technique may work for one person but not for another. Or even for a person who gets a lot of benefit out of one type of tool such as IFS or Brainspotting, there may be wounding held in such a way that those tools do not work, so we experiment and try something else such as Sensorimotor Psychotherapy.
Healing Anxious Parts with IFS
IFS parts work is a wonderful method for working with anxiety. In particular IFS is helpful for getting to know how anxiety lives in your system and for harnessing the power of your core Self or spirit to comfort and heal the root causes of anxious parts.
Anxious Proactive Parts
Do you have parts of yourself that help you prevent bad things from happening, from being shamed, embarrassed, rejected or abandoned? Are they always on the lookout to avoid certain situations? Perhaps they make you to go quiet, avoid conflict, overexplain, control, criticize, people please, care take, or something else to prevent something bad from happening. These parts often show up with an anxious energy in the body. In IFS, these parts are called “managers.” They are protecting younger parts in the system that are holding wounding such as that of trauma responses (fight/ flight/ freeze) and attachment hurts. They are preventing these exiled parts of the system from being activated because they can be extremely overwhelming in the moment. In IFS we bring healing to these younger exiled parts so the managers do not have to anxiously work so hard.
Reactive Parts
Sometimes anxiety is so overwhelming that reactive parts come in to help soothe the discomfort. Sometimes this may look like numbing behaviors. From binge-watching shows, to overeating, to scrolling on your phone to serious addictions - these parts are coming in to help soothe the system, although in some cases this may lead to further anxiety and pain. Other times, these parts may have a big reaction to something - they may rage or yell or dissociate. In IFS, these parts are called “firefighters” because their goal is to put out the metaphorical fire inside that happens when anxiety and the connected exiled parts have been activated. IFS can help you bring compassion and healing to these parts if they are keeping you from living the life you want.
Ancestral Healing, Cultural Wounds, and other Outside Energies
One of the best parts of IFS is that it opens a doorway to spiritual healing of wounding in the ancestral line, wounding in cultural systems, and outside energies. We know through epigenetics that trauma can be passed down through generations. Cultural messaging can also be held by anxious parts. When this energy is encountered it is up to your internal wisdom if it is something you would like to release both for you and potentially for your ancestors. IFS has beautiful methods for helping this healing to happen, some of which are drawn from indigenous wisdom that has existed for thousands of years.
Relational Healing for Anxiety
Anxiety can be caused by disconnection in relationships, can prevent connection in relationships, and can heal in relationships. At the heart of my relational work is the Emotionally Focused Therapy model because it is heart-centered and backed by research. I’ve also found that parts work through IFS and somatic attachment work using Sensorimotor Psychotherapy can also help heal relational blocks when clients get stuck in EFT.
At the heart of this work is embodied communication. It is about sending authentic clear signals about needs and emotions in relationships. This can reduce anxiety, reduce isolation, and help people learn to co-regulate with others as opposed to coping with life all by themselves. This is what love is all about.
Often time there is deeper healing that needs to happen before this more vulnerable relational work is possible so if this sounds daunting, please know this may come later in treatment, particularly if you or your loved one has a history of trauma.