What is Anxiety?

Anxiety: When Your Brain and Nervous System Go Full Drama Mode

Everyone's experience of anxiety is so different and it's hard to know exactly what causes anxiety problems, but there can be lots of factors involved from stored trauma to present day jitters.

Importantly, anxiety is only a part of you, and not the whole of who you are, What if we didn't see it as a bad enemy, but a helpful, protective friend? I mean, we do actually need it to cross the road at times!

But if we imagine a world without anxiety, a place where the built-in alarm system of our bodies is permanently switched off. At first glance, it might sound like a paradise free of worry, but anxiety does plays a crucial role in our survival and overall functioning. We all get a little anxiety, it can be quite natural.

Here’s what could happen if we didn’t have anxiety:

• Lack of Warning Signals:   Anxiety acts as our internal alarm system, alerting us to potential threats or risks. Without it, we might miss subtle cues of danger, which could lead to reckless behaviour. For example, if you didn’t feel that twinge of anxiety before crossing a busy street, you might be less cautious and more prone to injury.

• Reduced Preparation and Planning:   That nervous energy you often feel before an important event isn’t just about stress, it’s motivation to plan and prepare. We learn from our anxious moments to improve our strategies and avoid future pitfalls. Without anxiety, you might skip these important lessons, potentially making impulsive decisions without considering the consequences.

• Impaired Learning from Mistakes:   Anxiety sometimes gives us the discomfort necessary to reflect on what went wrong. It’s like a gentle (or sometimes not so gentle) nudge to reconsider our choices. In a world without anxiety, you might repeat harmful behaviours simply because there’s no internal reminder that something didn’t quite work out the last time.

• Riskier Behaviour:  On the flip side, while you might enjoy a certain level of carefree living without those sleepless nights over every little worry, you’d also likely take more risks. That lack of caution might lead to trouble in situations where a hint of anxiety would have otherwise kept you safe, like a teenager testing the limits on a risky stunt without the internal check of "maybe I shouldn't."

• Challenges in Emotional Growth:   Although anxiety can feel overwhelming, it’s also a catalyst for personal growth. Overcoming anxiety helps build resilience, self-awareness, and problem-solving skills. Without any anxiety, our emotional development might miss out on these important opportunities to learn about our boundaries and strengths.

  
  

In essence, while the idea of a life without anxiety might seem idyllic at first, this emotion is deeply intertwined with our ability to assess risks, learn from experience, and make decisions that protect our well-being. Anxiety isn’t just a source of discomfort, it’s an evolutionary tool that, despite its occasional overreactions, helps keep us safe and ready to face the world.

So looking closer...Ever feel like your brain is that one friend who overreacts to everything? The one who turns a mildly awkward interaction into an existential crisis? Yep, that’s anxiety, your brain’s totally unnecessary emergency alert system, firing off alarms for things that are not emergencies. Anxiety is basically your brain’s internal alarm system, designed to keep you alert to potential dangers, but sometimes, it malfunctions and starts freaking out over things that aren’t actually threats.

Your Brain on Anxiety: The Overprotective Bodyguard

When anxiety speaks, it's like an alarm system going off inside you. In plain language, it’s saying:

• "Beware, something might be wrong."   Anxiety alerts you that there could be danger or something to be cautious about, even if it's not immediately clear what that is.

• "Slow down and check things out."   It urges you to pause and reconsider your situation before making a move, aiming to protect you from potential harm.

• "I'm here to keep you safe."   At its core, anxiety is meant to be a protective signal. It’s trying to help you avoid risky situations—even if sometimes, it overreacts and causes worry when there isn’t real danger.

  
  

Ultimately, the message is that your body and mind are on guard, trying to keep you out of harm’s way. When anxiety becomes too loud or frequent, it can start to feel overwhelming rather than protective and you end up with survival energy with no place to go. Recognizing this message helps you understand its role so you can learn strategies to manage it better.

Picture your brain as a hyper-vigilant security guard stationed in your nervous system. Its job? Keeping you safe from danger. The issue? It’s a little too enthusiastic about the whole thing.

Instead of saving its alarms for actual threats (fire, wild animals, people who misuse “your” and “you’re”), it starts freaking out over literally anything:

🧠 "Oh no, you sent that email with a typo! Now you must quit your job and flee the country."  

🧠 "That person didn’t text back in 0.3 seconds? Obviously, they hate you."  

🧠 "You waved at someone who wasn’t waving at you? You can never show your face in public again."

It’s like your brain thinks embarrassment is life-threatening, and the only logical response is panicking until further notice. Your brain believes that if it worries enough, it can prevent bad outcomes. But instead of solving problems, anxiety tends to get stuck in overthinking, worst-case scenarios, and self-doubt.

The Nervous System’s Role in This Chaos

Anxiety originates in the amygdala, the brain’s built-in danger detector. This almond-shaped region is responsible for assessing threats and triggering the body's stress response. When anxiety kicks in, it sends signals to the autonomic nervous system, activating the fight-or-flight mode, an evolutionary mechanism designed to help us survive. We are now in survival with energy flooding around our body in the way of cortisol and adrenaline.

What Happens in Your Body?

Once the stress response is activated, your nervous system takes over, leading to a cascade of physiological reactions:

💓 Heart Rate Increases – Your body pumps blood faster, preparing muscles for quick action, whether that’s sprinting from danger or nervously pacing.

💨 Breathing Becomes Shallow – Oxygen intake shifts to rapid, short breaths, fuelling a readiness for movement but often leaving you feeling lightheaded.

🕵️‍♂️ Hyper-Vigilance Sets In – Your senses sharpen, making you hyper-aware of everything, every sound, every movement, every possible worst-case scenario.

🦵 Muscles Tense Up – Blood rushes to major muscle groups, readying them for escape or confrontation, but sometimes, instead of action, you just freeze.

When anxiety strikes, it triggers your body’s “fight-or-flight” response, flooding your system with stress hormones. Two key players in this cascade are:

Adrenaline (Epinephrine): This hormone increases your heart rate and blood pressure, sharpens your senses, and gives you a burst of energy to prepare you for quick action.

Cortisol: Known as the stress hormone, cortisol helps maintain fluid balance and supplies energy by increasing glucose in the bloodstream. It also modulates other bodily processes during stress.

These chemicals prepare your body to react to perceived threats. Although these responses are natural and can be beneficial in short bursts, prolonged exposure to these stress hormones during chronic anxiety can affect your health over time.

Why Anxiety Feels Overdramatic

Your nervous system doesn’t differentiate between real threats and imagined ones. It reacts the same way to an approaching tiger as it does to an awkward email. The problem? In modern life, actual danger is rare, but anxiety still misfires, responding as though minor stressors are life-threatening.

Believe it or not, anxiety actually has a job, it’s not just there to ruin your day. It exists to keep you alert and safe, acting as your brain’s internal watchdog. Evolutionarily, anxiety helped our ancestors avoid danger (like sabre-toothed tigers or really bad food choices). But in modern life, where the threats are more existential than life-threatening, anxiety malfunctions, keeping us stuck in a cycle of overthinking and rumination. What if we befriended it??

Onto Rumination, Which Feels Like a Trap

Rumination happens when your brain replays past events or worries excessively. Instead of resolving an issue, it goes in loops, keeping stress high without leading to action. It’s like watching the worst episode of your life over and over instead of moving forward.

We ruminate because our brains think that endlessly replaying thoughts will somehow lead to clarity, resolution, or emotional relief. But instead of solving problems, rumination often traps us in loops of overanalysing, making stress worse.

Why Do We Get Stuck?

• Survival Instincts Gone Overboard – The brain evolved to scan for threats, but in modern life, it obsesses over social interactions, decisions, and regrets instead of real danger.

• Emotional Processing vs. Emotional Spiral – Some reflection is helpful, but rumination keeps emotions stuck, rather than allowing them to pass naturally.

• Seeking Certainty & Control – The brain wants answers, but some situations don’t have perfect solutions, leading to endless thinking without resolution.

• Memory Replay – Sometimes, rumination is tied to past wounds, where the brain retriggers old emotions, trying to make sense of them. The body remembers what the mind forgot

  
  

Anxiety and Avoidance: Taming the Monkey Mind

Imagine your mind as a hyperactive monkey, leaping from one worry to the next. That’s anxiety for you, a natural alarm system that sometimes urges you to avoid stressful situations. Avoidance can provide temporary relief by giving you a break when things feel overwhelming. For instance, stepping away from a triggering conversation can protect your energy and calm the storm, for a little while.

However, when avoidance becomes your default response, it can also hold you back. Constantly dodging challenges means missing the chance to teach your inner monkey to chill out and cope with real-life stressors. Over time, this habit fosters isolation and reinforces fear rather than encouraging growth.

The trick is finding balance: using avoidance sparingly to manage immediate overwhelm while gradually confronting your fears. Mindfulness techniques can help you observe those frantic monkey thoughts without letting them run wild, and gentle exposure to your triggers can build resilience over time.

In short, while avoidance can be a handy tool during a moment of high anxiety, leaning on it too much might prevent you from learning to manage anxiety in the long run. Embrace strategies that allow your monkey mind to settle and grow, after all, even hyperactive primates can learn to take a breather.

Since anxiety is trying to help, the key is redirecting it instead of fear loops:

✅ Deep Breathing – This tricks your nervous system into thinking “Wait, maybe we’re not dying?” and helps slow everything down.

✅ Ground Yourself in the Present – Remind your brain that you’re not actually in danger, so there’s no need for panic mode.

✅ Use the “Is This Helpful?” Test – If an anxious thought isn’t leading to an actionable solution, let it go, write about it, breath through it or shake it out (Like a animal on tv).

✅ Give Your Brain a Task – Redirect overthinking into journaling, exercising, or doing something productive, so your brain isn’t stuck spinning in circles.

Meet Greg: The Protector

Naming your brain, befriending the protector part that is anxiety can create some mental distance between you and the anxious part, or the overthinking mess it occasionally becomes. It helps you treat intrusive thoughts like an outside opinion instead of absolute truth.

Let’s say you name your brain or anxiety, Greg (or any other name that feels right). Instead of "I’m spiralling about that text message," 

now it’s "Greg is freaking out again." "What are you trying to tell me?"

Greg LOVES to analyse everything. Greg sees a small inconvenience and can immediately escalate it to the apocalypse:

🧠 “You slightly mispronounced a word? Arghhh, time to overthink that for six hours.”  

🧠 “That person didn’t smile back? Guess we’ll be replaying that interaction until further notice.”  

🧠 “You forgot to reply to an email? Might as well quit your job and live in the woods now.”

How to Handle Greg’s Unsolicited Advice

Instead of arguing with Greg, treat him like a dramatic co-worker or a friend , depending on its size...

✅ Thank him for his input, but politely decline the panic.  

✅ Ask, “Greg, is this actually helpful right now?”  "What do you need?" "What are you trying to tell me/protect me from?"

✅ Remind him that not every thought deserves a TED Talk in your head.

Soon, Greg will learn that you’re the boss, not him. He may still try to convince you that embarrassing moments require exile, but now you can roll your eyes and move on.

If you’re asking for evidence on how naming your brain helps with overthinking, research in psychology suggests that distancing techniques, like externalizing thoughts, can reduce emotional intensity. It’s the same principle behind cognitive defusion in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), where labelling a thought separates it from reality, making it easier to manage.

If you’re asking whether Greg’s dramatic warnings have any real basis, that depends! Anxiety sometimes detects genuine patterns, but often overreacts based on emotional memory rather than hard facts. A good check is asking:

• Is there actual danger, or is Greg catastrophizing?

• Have I been through something like this before, and was it fine?

• Would a calm person see this as a big deal, or is my nervous system just being extra loud?

  
  

So, Greg might be right sometimes, but let’s be real, he’s mostly just looking for things to overanalyse.

Greg can have a field day replaying every moment, making sure you overanalyse all possible scenarios. When there's real evidence to support your thoughts, like a breakup where mistakes were made, rumination can feel even more justified, but that doesn’t mean it’s productive.

Why Greg Won’t Let This Go When Ruminating

• The Brain Loves to Solve Problems – Greg believes that if he just replays the conversations enough, maybe he’ll find a hidden answer to undo everything. Spoiler: That’s not how time works.

• The Illusion of Control – Fixating on “what could’ve been” creates a false sense that thinking harder could change the past, which only deepens the emotional spiral.

• Emotional Memory – Your brain stores painful experiences vividly because it wants to prevent future hurt, but instead, it keeps you stuck in replay mode.

  
  

Shutting Greg Down When He's Gone To Far, Without Ignoring the Pain

✅ Acknowledge the Lessons, Not the Loops – Instead of repeating “I messed up,” shift to “I learned something about myself.” Growth comes from reflection, not self-punishment.

✅ Focus on What’s Still in Your Control – Greg loves living in the past, but your future choices matter more than reanalysing old conversations.

✅ Limit Rumination Time – Set aside 5 minutes max for reflection, then consciously redirect your energy to something grounding, music, movement, or talking to someone who keeps you present.

✅ Forgive Yourself (Even If It’s Hard) – No one handles relationships perfectly. If you can’t let go yet, at least try to shift from self-blame to self-compassion.

Greg may still pop up now and then, but you don’t have to let him run the show.

At the end of the day, your brain means well, but sometimes it’s too eager to keep you safe from things that aren’t actually dangerous. The trick is learning how to send it a memo saying, “Calm down, we’re fine,” so you can go back to doing normal things, like sending emails without contemplating moving to another continent.

Disclaimer

Please note: The ideas discussed in this blog are intended for informational and reflective purposes only and are not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

If you are experiencing any mental health concerns, please consult a qualified healthcare provider or a licensed mental health professional.

These ideas reflect our current understanding, and much research continues to expand our knowledge. While one size does not fit all, and many tools and approaches can help you reach your destination, each journey is unique. Collaboration between you, your healthcare professionals, and your support network is crucial.

This is the way I see my work: I honour each individual’s unique journey and offer perspectives designed to empower you on your own healing path. This blog does not recommend discontinuing or altering any prescribed medications or treatment plans; always make decisions regarding your health in consultation with a trusted healthcare professional.