How Anxiety Fools Us Into Thinking It's Protecting Us

Anxiety personified might sound like a person constantly whispering in your ear, “be careful,” or “something bad might happen.” If you have ever been around a person like this with “nervous Nelly” tendencies, you can understand how, repeated often enough, a message of impending doom starts to feel accurate and real. Such is the case with anxiety: it repeats messages of caution until we feel that it is, indeed, accurate in its predictions of the worst-case scenario.

The “nervous Nelly” is not necessarily neurotic or biased towards negativity; rather, he or she is likely under the impression that they are being preemptive, helpful, and planful against a possible negative outcome. The problem, however, is that the possible outcome is just that—possible—but neither probable nor likely. This is the way that anxiety presents itself as being helpful and protective when, in actuality, it is serving to disrupt our peace of mind and ability to be mindful and present.

We might view anxiety as a messenger, but an unreliable one at that. Like the “nervous Nelly,” anxiety creates a lot of narratives and stories of what might happen but tends to lose sight of what is happening. Though it is unreliable and often inaccurate in its predictions, anxiety nonetheless can be persistent, loud, and can become habitual and reflexive, resulting in what psychiatrist Aaron Beck termed “automatic thoughts.” The automatic thoughts, when left unchallenged can cause us to respond to safe situations in anxiety-driven ways. For example, if our anxiety tells us that driving on a busy highway is dangerous, we may respond by avoiding the route completely, even if it means taking a longer and more circuitous route. The inherent problem, of course, is that anxiety sold us an inaccurate story that the highway, because it is busy, is therefore unsafe.

In his seminal book, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and the Emotional Disorders, Beck writes of a man who wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of his bathroom faucet dripping and the next image he sees in his mind is the entire house underwater. This is perhaps the most succinct and accurate description of anxiety: it is, in essence, a fear-based leap from tangible situation (dripping faucet) to unrealistic and catastrophic conclusion (flooded house). The falsely protective side of the anxious thought is the idea that it is better to prepare for the possibility flooded house than it is to assume the drip is no big deal and might be easily fixed. While a more measured response might be to wait until morning to see if the faucet is still dripping or to check it to ensure the knob is turned tightly off, the anxiety narrative skips over these more rational steps, telling us it is keeping us safe by causing us to be hypervigilant and fixated on the situation.

What Beck terms “catastrophizing” (focusing on the worst possible outcome, however unlikely, or thinking that a situation is unbearable or impossible when it is just uncomfortable) does not actually keep us safe or protect us from future harm. In fact, it serves to heighten and intensify the feelings of anxiety and the body’s response to those feelings. Unchecked, this can cause feelings of anxiety and worry to escalate to feelings and symptoms of panic. Ironically, this is the opposite of feeling safe—what we think is protecting us is actually making us more anxious.

What if we assume that anxiety knows nothing rather than assuming it is predictive, accurate, and omnipotent? Simple as this sounds, anxiety is skilled at presenting itself as an authority on what will happen next. Challenging this requires focused and concerted effort and attention to our thoughts and a willingness to challenge those that sneakily present themselves as factual when, in reality, they are mere possibilities and presumptions that often end up not only inaccurate but also wildly overblown. At a primitive level, anxiety can be helpful: if, as cave dwellers, we were constantly on guard against predators, our heightened fear response likely kept us safe. But here is the point: we live a much more sophisticated and nuanced existence than our neanderthal ancestors did; therefore, anxiety is simply not as effective a safety measure as it once was. Our modern lives require us to not automatically assume that every anxious thought is working in our favor or towards our safety. Beck writes of learning to “drop…false or unworkable” rules and thoughts “from the repertoire.” Indeed, to silence the false authority of anxiety, we need to begin recognizing when it may seem to be helping us but it is actually causing us further discomfort.