Your beliefs and self-talk may have a lot to do with your anxiety.
There is no question that anxiety can impact us on many different levels and get in the way of fully engaging in life. In my previous blog, I reflected on why looking deeper into our experience and learning to better understand our anxiety can help in minimising its impacts on our life. In this article, I’d like to spend a bit more time talking about the different aspects of anxiety and why these are useful to explore.
Self talk
If you think about a typical situation that usually leads to anxiety for you, you might notice that at some point through that experience, you start telling yourself something about what’s happening. This could be as soon as you find yourself in that situation, leading up to it or in the process of it happening. Things like public speaking, taking an exam, meeting new people, driving somewhere you’ve never been before, saying “no” to someone, waiting for a test result and many other experiences can be anxiety provoking for a lot of people and there is usually a story we tell ourselves about them.
We all engage in self-talk and have an internal running commentary of the events in our life to some extent. This is completely normal. However, what we say to ourselves and how, does have an impact on us. Learning to pay attention to this internal chatter and noticing its tone, volume, vocabulary and the actual messages is a step towards understanding where your anxiety comes from. This will take some work, as a lot of the time, our self-talk happens automatically and out of our awareness. As you start listening, you might, for example, notice you tell yourself you’re lazy as soon as you rest for 5 minutes. You might hear an internal voice saying: “If I speak up, people will think I’m bossy” or you notice your partner looks stressed and you think to yourself “it must be something I did”.
Once you become aware of some of the things you say to yourself, there’s an opportunity to start asking: “Does this reflect reality? Am I looking at the whole picture? What’s the evidence for that? Would I speak like this to a dear friend? Whose belief/idea is that?” The answers to these questions might be unclear or conflicting. While a part of you might be fully aware that what you say to yourself doesn’t reflect the full and current reality, another part of you might strongly believe it is fully true. Noticing these internal messages is a chance to explore where they come from and start developing a gentler and more self-compassionate language for your inner dialogue.
Deep beliefs
As you begin to look deeper into the things you say to yourself, you will start uncovering some deep seated beliefs about yourself and life in general. Our core beliefs stem from what we learnt about the world and our place in it when we were growing up. They may also be influenced by other significant events such as trauma, prolonged periods of stress, illness etc. These deep beliefs then drive a lot of our thoughts and behaviour. How we process our emotions is also based on our beliefs and stories we tell ourselves about them. We might hold some beliefs around what it means to experience or express strong emotions that may then further complicate how anxiety impacts our life. Here is an example:
Jane grew up in a family where emotions were dismissed and considered not only unimportant, but also a barrier to achievement. When she expressed emotions as a child, Jane didn’t receive affection, and was taught she needed to get over it. Achievement, on the other hand, was strongly valued, praised and followed by expressions of pride and love. The beliefs Jane has developed based on these experiences are: “emotions are bad” and “I’m only worthy of love if I am successful”. These beliefs lead Jane to work very hard, rarely giving herself a break, while suppressing emotions along the way. Jane has learnt to prioritise achievement and success in order to have her need for feeling loved met. The idea of failing at something brings up fear of not being lovable as a result. Jane started to avoid situations she felt she could not succeed in. This avoidance has reinforced the idea that these are things that could lead to failure and therefore the anxiety around these situations. Jane learnt to suppress her emotions, because she believes they are bad. The suppressed emotions that don’t get to be acknowledged and expressed are contributing to her experience of anxiety. She is also anxious about being anxious due to her belief that having emotions is a bad thing.
Although your beliefs have most likely formed for a very good reason and served you well at the time, there is a chance you might be holding onto outdated beliefs that no longer support your wellbeing. In Jane’s case, she needed to feel loved as a child in order to thrive. If the only way she was able to have this need met was to be successful and not feel emotions, it is a sign of her strength and creativity to adapt to the situation this way. It might be useful for her to acknowledge how well these beliefs served her in the past before she decides what she would like to do with them next. Perhaps there is some level of gratitude she might want to express to her young self that was so resourceful in taking care of herself. Once she is ready, she might decide to discard or replace these beliefs.
Understanding your triggers
As somebody who experiences anxiety, you most likely already know quite well, which situations lead to anxiety for you. Becoming aware of the beliefs you hold about yourself and your place in the world will help you find the connections between these situations and your anxiety. Once these links are unravelled and you can look at them from a distance, you might find it easier to see why they were there in the first place. This will not only help you find compassion with yourself, but it will support you in being able to recognise what is happening the next time you get triggered. Being aware of what triggers your anxiety, takes a lot of its power away. You’re then able to start learning to respond to situations, rather than reacting to them.
Digging deep into our experiences helps us learn about the way past events are impacting our life at present. Becoming aware of these connections and how we are a part of the equation is essential for our healing and growth.
Download the free Guide for Processing Emotions to help you get started on learning how to process emotions in a healthy way. This will support you in preventing a build up of emotions as well as using coping strategies that can be unhelpful in the long run.
