What is anxiety?
Anxiety is rooted in fear and worry, often about the future. There are really good reasons why you would be fearful of things in the future. You may have experience or information that tells you there is something to be scared about.
There are so many ways we experience anxiety. Racing thoughts, sweating, increased heart rate, GI issues, panic, shutting down, agitation, crappy sleep, irritability, overstimulation. It might even make you feel a bit anxious reading about these reactions.
So why do these reactions happen? Well, to protect us! A racing heart helps blood pump into our extremities – so you can run or fight. This could make you feel sweaty or clammy. Your body gets super sensitive to sounds, touch, smells, and locks in on distressing images in your environment.
For example, clutter, facial expressions, screaming kids, the unpaid bills sitting on your counter, the overflowing stinky garbage can, or the tightness of your clothes. Your body and mind are working really hard to alert you of all the perceived dangers in your environment.
Usually, there is a trigger or activating event that happens to kick your anxiety into action.
Such as:
negative feedback from your boss
seeing something distressing in the news
someone cutting you off
getting back from vacation and seeing hundreds of unread emails in your inbox
being put on the spot to speak in public
hearing loud sudden noises
or a thought popping in that makes you question if you made a mistake.
These triggers rapidly activate those mind and body reactions that we just touched on. When that happens, the rational and problem-solving parts of you tend to take a step back, and your reactive-protective parts of you jump into action.
This could make you react impulsively, and can look like snapping at people, blurting stuff out, getting violent (verbally or physically), or rushing. It could also look like shutting down, getting quiet, shying away, freezing up, distracting yourself with cleaning, more work, binge eating, drugs, drinking, or anything to numb out.
You are Comprised of Parts
If you noticed, I’m using language of “parts” of you rather than YOU, yourself. This is because that’s how our minds work. You don’t operate in a unilateral way. You are comprised of parts. These parts are like their own person living inside of you. They have their own thoughts, feelings, and their own idea of how to handle situations.
Don’t believe me? Just think for a second…how did you decide on whether or not to get out of bed this morning?
A part of you may have not wanted to get up and was still tired. Maybe it wanted to sleep more, go back into a good dream, or wanted to avoid the tasks and responsibilities of the day.
Another part of you could have been saying, GET UP! We have stuff to do! You can’t be late. Spend one more minute in bed and we’re going to have to rush to get to work!
This is called an internal dilemma. You have two or more “parts” of you that have conflicting ideas or desires. When this dilemma happens, there is a third part that gets left with a decision to make. It must juggle between the risks vs. rewards of each potential outcome.
This part, that is holding the dilemma, is the part of you that produces anxiety. It’s thinking, what do I do? If I do this, this might happen, but if I do this, this might happen!
Sometimes our anxious parts can manage these decisions rather well, but sometimes they get overloaded and overwhelmed, and another reactive protective part has to jump in to help. That’s when you will see the impulsive reactions or the shutdown.
Why do I have so much anxiety?
There are neurological and biological mechanisms that influence our reaction to threats.
But I'm WAY more interested to learn about those little characters that exist inside of us that are behind the scenes pulling the strings.
So, anxious parts – where do you come from?
In Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), we believe that we are born with parts. We have our “Self” and we have our “parts” that were meant to go on our life’s journey alongside us. These parts have their own unique roles, but at the core of their role, is to do one thing – protect us.
Because these parts are there to protect us, they’re always standing watch. They all hold a specific job, for example, to keep you from feeling emotional pain, to push you though stressful situations, to keep you motivated, to provide you with logic and reason, or to shelter you from abuse.
These parts will adapt over time based on life experiences. When you were a baby, a part was there to help you communicate your needs by crying in effort to get you fed, changed, and be comforted.
As you go through adverse or traumatic experiences in life, these parts may change their strategies to protect you, because their original strategy wasn’t effective and resulted in you getting hurt emotionally or physically.
This is how our anxious parts develop. They get forced into a role to be a decision maker. And if this decision maker developed let’s say, when you were 5, that’s likely the maturity level of that part. That’s when you might notice your thoughts being very extreme, black and white, and irrational.
Because that’s how kids’ minds are. They don’t have the knowledge and experience in life to know that dropping their lollipop on the ground isn’t the end of the world!
When the young anxious parts send out a signal like: “OMG, we’re going to die!” or “Oh nooooooo our life is ruined!”
It activates those reactive protective parts mentioned earlier.
The reactive parts are usually young too! They may be teenagers or elementary-aged. They jump in, in effort to fight off the threat, run away from the threat, or freeze up so you won’t be detected. But these efforts are often outdated, harmful to you, or no longer beneficial to your life now.
Fighting with your partner is the perfect example of this. You may notice you react like a child, saying irrational or extreme things, or reacting in extreme ways.
To fight back - you may yell.
To run away - you go to another room and slam the door.
or to freeze - you may not be able to think or speak.
These reactions often aren’t conscious choices that you make, but more of an instinctual, conditioned response – parts reacting from what they know about how to handle danger.
So, what do we do about this?
How to identify anxious parts
We have to know how to spot an anxious part before we can attempt to manage or help it. To spot an anxious part, the first thing you can do is find it in or around your body. How do you know it’s there? Is it making your heart race? Is it a weight on your chest? Tightness in your neck and shoulders? Butterflies in your stomach?
Once you find it, sit with it. Notice it. Stay with it. Doing this often calms it down or could cause it to feel more intense. It’s much like a child throwing a tantrum because no one is paying attention to them. Once you tend to the child, they could respond positively, or they could respond with more outbursts or anger.
We tend to run from these anxious sensations, because there may be a part of us that is afraid that if we focus on it, it will completely take over and overwhelm us, or even kill us! Even if it seems irrational, it is a valid concern. We must assume that these parts have GOOD reasons for being afraid.
Once you identify the anxious part, sit with it and focus on it, you may even get insights that naturally pop in. It can come up as a thought, or a gut feeling about it. You may even start to feel like you want to cry, for no apparent reason. This is all normal.
Next, notice how you feel toward it. Do you hate it? Are you scared of it? You may also notice your mind losing focus on it.
To help get more clear about this anxious part, you can try to create an image of it. Does it have a size, shape, color, texture, or energy to it? Some parts can show up as a cloud, a person, a black hole, really anything at all. For every person it is different.
If you can't create an image of it, you can focus on how it makes you feel in or around your body. Does it make you feel heavy? Jittery? Alert?
After you have established a better sense of this part, continue to focus on it. Continue to notice how you feel toward it. It can be helpful to imagine placing it inside of a room. You can even place yourself in the room with it or observe it from an outside window.
See if you can start to get curious about it. If you notice that you don't like it, or you want it gone, that is an indicator that you have another part, or multiple parts that are also present. You can ask those parts to give you some space or step back.
I know it may seem weird, talking to yourself like this, but you likely already do that often.
In Internal Family Systems Therapy, we embrace the idea of multiple personalities. Western culture tends to be a bit scared of multiple personalities, especially after movies like Split.
That's a very extreme version of it. I think everyone has multiple personalities, or "parts." The parts each have their own characteristics, beliefs, and desires...AKA personality!
How we experience our parts is on a spectrum. In extreme cases, for someone who has gone through an incredible amount of trauma in their lifetime (especially childhood), when their parts take over, they may have no recollection of what the part did or said. They dissociate or go somewhere else while the part takes over and handles things for them.
So first, find the part of you that is creating the anxious feelings or thoughts in or around you. Sit with it, focus on it. Notice how you feel toward it. Place it into a room with you or look at it through a window and notice what comes up.
How to help anxious parts
After learning about the what and the why of our anxious parts, we can now start to learn about how we can help them. Before we get into the how, it is imperative that we learn about our Self. I have touched on how we are born with parts.
If we have parts, that means we also have a Self, which we can describe as our "true" Self. In Internal Family Systems Therapy, we recognize that our true Self contains specific characteristics. At our core, when our parts give us space, it will naturally reveal these characteristics.
A way to know if your true Self is present is to look out for the following attributes:
Compassionate
Curious
Calm
Courageous
Connected
Confident
Creative
Clear
Present
Perspective
Patient
Playful
Persistent
When your Self is present, you feel a sense of peace, acceptance, openness, understanding, and develop an innate wisdom. The Self will be used to help our anxious parts.
Our internal world is very complex. It operates in a very sophisticated and interconnected way. Our parts being connected to each other does not mean they interact harmoniously. They can be judgmental, mean, and dominant over each other.
Our internal world can often look like a dysfunctional family. Siblings will fight, argue, and disagree. If these siblings do not have involved, loving, balanced, and present parents, you could see chaos break out in the household.
If the parents or caregivers respond with harsh and unfair punishments, lack compassion, and understanding, and operate from a place of judgment and abuse, the children may become more violent to take back control, or isolate and withdraw to protect themselves out of fear.
If the parents or caregivers are not around, are neglectful, aloof, or uncaring, children will be left to fend for themselves, knowing no one will protect them, and they will adapt as such.
This could cause them to become more hardened and proactively protective to let people around them know that they are not to be messed with. Or they could become overly friendly and accommodating to avoid confrontation altogether.
I'm giving you these examples because this is what happens inside of us. Our parts are young, misguided, scared, angry, neglected and abandoned without a "parent" around.
You are that parent.
Have you been there for your inner children? What kind of parent are you to them? Have you abandoned them? Have you harshly judged them? Have you neglected their needs?
What are your child-like parts to do without an involved and loving parent?
Your internal world is a reflection of what type of parent you have been to them. I am not telling you this to make you feel ashamed or guilty. I am telling you this to help you become aware of what your parts are seeking.
They want your attention, your presence, love and understanding, your patience, compassion, and forgiveness.
They want to be recognized for the hard work they have done to protect you. They want you to know how they are struggling. How they are overwhelmed, sad, hurt, and alone. They want your help.
Connect Inside With Your Anxiety
Now, let's get back to your anxious part. Earlier I asked you to find it, focus on it, and notice how you feel toward it.
How do you feel toward it?
If you feel anything toward it other than the characteristics I described above, that means it is not your Self with this part. It is an imposter, a part trying to do this for you - a sibling, trying to be the parent.
Ask those other parts to move aside and let you do this yourself. Try to develop a sense of compassion, understanding, openness, or curiosity for your anxious part. As you do this, you may start to feel connected to it.
When you are connected to it, you could start to feel how it is feeling. This could be overwhelm, helplessness, exhaustion, or even sadness.
Ask this part, "what do you want me to know about you? I am here, I am listening." Extend your openness or compassion toward it. You can do this in a form of a colored energy or even a hug.
Once you can show up for your parts in this way, and not just the anxious ones, your internal world will slowly start to shift. They may no longer feel abandoned or neglected by you. They will begin to trust you through your consistency and love for them. This will help them to relax.
Next, you can ask this part, "how can I help you?" If you wait patiently, you may develop a sense, or a knowing of what it needs. This can come in a form of thoughts, imagery, body sensations, an energy, or a however it wants to communicate with you.
As you do this, it may feel like you're just making this all up. That is often how it feels for people. That is what instinct can feel like. Try not to overthink it, because overthinking is...well, anxiety!
I hope you give yourself the space to connect with your parts. They are waiting for you, longing for an adult's warm presence.
What type of parent will you be today to your anxious parts?
I'm Malissa Egan, LCSW. I help individuals and couples heal their invisible wounds, break their problematic cycles, and reconnect with their purpose and passions. If you're ready to experience connection, compassion, and deep healing, reach out. I’m happy to help!
If you would like to learn more about Internal Family Systems, I highly recommend you read No Bad Parts.
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