Renaming Anxiety
When we think of anxiety, just the word can conjure up some strong reactions. I experience a tightening in my stomach and chest and can feel my heart accelerate, just by typing it!
In Westernized Society, the term has become an everyday topic in conversation- ‘We get anxious just thinking about it’, ‘it makes me anxious to know..’, we feel ‘anxious just talking about...’. The term ‘anxiety’ has become so common that we have strayed from trying to understand it or look more closely at it. We simply take for granted that it exists in our everyday lives as an ever-present presence.
However, there is hope and the first step of managing any challenge is to identify it. We must face and name our dragons. So, what is anxiety- really?
The feeling of anxiety is a broad term given to the physiological response of our Alarm System. In the example above, of my physical response to simply typing the word, my anxiety is triggered by hormones being released into my system that tell my brain to be ready for fight, flight or freeze, leading to a heightened state of alertness (arousal and attention). And it’s my feelings about the stimulus, how I make sense of what I’m experiencing and what I can do with it.
Once we understand the anatomy of alarm, we can begin the work of adjusting our perceptions. There is a negative connotation attached to ‘anxiety’, ‘depression’, ‘stress’, so just by simply changing out the words ‘stress’ and ‘anxiety’ with ‘alarm’ we can reduce the stigma attached to the term. If we can understand them as functions within the activated Alarm System, we can recognize there is a reason for our alarm and begin to manage it.
Between 1 in 5 and 1 in 8 children in North America qualify for a diagnosis in anxiety. Their alarm systems are activated on a regular, and sometimes sustained basis. The good news is, our Alarm System already has management systems in place such as caution, adaptation, and courage. We can ease a child’s anxiety by helping them to slow down and find ways to manage their alarm. We have the ability to filter how much of the world they take in and how much time they are given to process their experiences. The best way to do this is by providing ample opportunity for rest and play. For our children, it’s a simpler process of taming the overwhelm so that they can begin the work of making sense of things. Children need time to work through their alarm and it needs to be done on a subconscious level, through their dreams and imaginations; play and rest are their built-in de-stressors.