Anxiety can feel like a mind that simply refuses to switch off. But what if it isn't just a problem to eliminate? Understanding what anxiety is trying to protect—and learning when worry has stopped being useful—can help us develop a very different relationship with it.

Anxiety is one of the most common reasons people come to therapy, although they don't always call it anxiety. Sometimes they say, “I just can't switch my brain off.” They replay conversations, worry about things that haven't happened, wake up at three in the morning solving tomorrow's problems, prepare for every possible outcome, or find themselves researching something on the internet long after they've probably learned everything useful there is to know. They may be exhausted and still unable to stop.

One of the difficulties with anxiety is that people often know perfectly well that they're anxious. Telling someone, “You don't need to worry about that,” is rarely very helpful. Usually they've already told themselves the same thing a hundred times. The more interesting question, in my view, is: What is the anxiety trying so hard to accomplish?

Anxiety Is Trying to Protect Us

Anxiety isn't inherently a malfunction. We need it. A certain amount of anxiety helps us prepare for an exam, notice danger, remember an important deadline and think carefully before making a major decision. The problem comes when our internal alarm system becomes too sensitive, stays switched on too long, or begins treating uncertainty itself as though it were dangerous.

I often find it useful to think of anxiety as an overenthusiastic protector. It has decided that if it can anticipate every problem, rehearse every conversation, research every possibility and keep you sufficiently vigilant, perhaps nothing bad will happen. Unfortunately, anxiety is very poor at knowing when its shift is over.

This is one reason I like some of the ideas from Internal Family Systems (IFS). Rather than immediately trying to silence the anxious part, we can become curious about it. What are you worried will happen? What are you trying to prevent? What would you be afraid of if you stopped watching so carefully? Sometimes the answer takes us somewhere much more useful than simply telling ourselves to calm down.

The Body Is Part of Anxiety Too

We tend to talk about anxiety as though it lives entirely in our thoughts, but anyone who has experienced significant anxiety knows that the body is very much involved. The heart speeds up, muscles tighten, breathing changes, the stomach becomes unsettled, sleep becomes difficult, and the nervous system prepares us to respond to something that may or may not actually be happening.

Then an interesting feedback loop can develop. We notice the physical sensations, interpret them as evidence that something is wrong, become more anxious, and the body responds accordingly. Before long we're not only worried about the original problem—we're worried about being worried.

This is why therapy for anxiety often needs to work in both directions. We can examine thoughts and beliefs, but we can also learn to notice what is happening physically, regulate the nervous system, slow things down and become less frightened of the sensations themselves. Sometimes the body needs convincing as much as the mind does.

The Search for Certainty

A great deal of anxiety seems to revolve around one particularly difficult fact about being human: we can never have complete certainty. We can make sensible decisions, gather information and prepare carefully, but eventually we reach the point where there is nothing more useful to do.

Anxiety doesn't particularly like that point.

So we check again. We ask another person for reassurance. We reread the email before sending it. We look up one more symptom. We go over the conversation from yesterday and wonder whether the other person was offended. We imagine what might happen six months from now and try to solve it today.

The irony is that these strategies can provide temporary relief while teaching the anxious system that uncertainty really is dangerous and must always be resolved. Part of learning to live with anxiety can therefore involve gradually becoming better at saying, “I've done what I reasonably can. I don't know exactly what will happen next, and for now I'm going to let that be enough.”

That is considerably easier to write than it is to do, of course.

Anxiety, Perfectionism and Burnout Often Travel Together

I've also noticed how frequently anxiety appears alongside perfectionism and burnout. Someone may look extremely competent from the outside. They're responsible, organized, helpful and dependable. Other people may even wonder what they could possibly be anxious about.

But sometimes that competence has become exhausting. If your internal rule is I can't make mistakes, I mustn't disappoint anyone, I need to stay on top of everything, or If I stop, everything will fall apart, there isn't much opportunity for your nervous system to stand down.

What looks like perfectionism can sometimes be another form of protection. If I do everything perfectly, perhaps nobody can criticize me. If I anticipate everyone's needs, perhaps nobody will be disappointed. If I remain in control, perhaps nothing unexpected can hurt me.

Eventually the strategy that helped someone succeed can also become the strategy that wears them out.

Sometimes ADHD Is Hiding in the Background

Anxiety and ADHD can also become tangled together in interesting ways. Someone who has spent years forgetting appointments, losing track of things, underestimating how long tasks will take or suddenly remembering something important at the last minute may develop a great deal of anxiety as a way of compensating.

They may become chronic list-makers, repeatedly check things, arrive excessively early or keep dozens of reminders because experience has taught them that something genuinely might slip through the cracks. From the outside it can look like ordinary anxiety; underneath it may be a complicated mixture of anxiety and executive-function difficulties.

This is one reason I'm cautious about reducing people too quickly to a diagnosis. The same behaviour can serve very different purposes in different people. We need to understand the person, not just identify the symptom.

Worry Can Feel Like Problem-Solving

I come from an earlier science background, and I like solving problems. Many of the people I work with do too. There is something satisfying about taking a difficult situation apart, understanding the pieces and figuring out what can actually be done.

But there is an important difference between problem-solving and worrying, even though they can feel remarkably similar.

Problem-solving tends to move toward a decision or an action. Worry tends to move in circles. If there is something useful you can do about a problem, by all means do it. Make the appointment, have the conversation, gather the information, write the plan. But eventually there comes a point where thinking about something for another two hours isn't going to produce a better answer.

Learning to recognize that point can be enormously useful: Am I still solving this problem, or am I now just feeding the anxiety?

Not Every Anxious Thought Needs an Answer

One of the changes that can happen in therapy is learning that we don't necessarily have to argue with every anxious thought. If your mind says, “What if this goes badly?”, you can spend the next hour constructing evidence for why it probably won't. Occasionally that's useful. But tomorrow your mind may simply produce another “what if.”

Sometimes a different response is possible: Yes, that's something I'm worried about. I don't know exactly what will happen. And I'm going to continue with my day anyway.

This is where approaches such as mindfulness, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), IFS and other experiential therapies can be helpful. The aim isn't necessarily to achieve a perfectly quiet mind. It is to change our relationship with what the mind is producing.

Thoughts can be important without automatically being instructions. Feelings can be uncomfortable without necessarily being dangerous. Anxiety can be present without having to run the entire show.

What Is the Anxiety Asking For?

Sometimes anxiety needs practical help. Sometimes it needs better boundaries, more sleep, less overload, a difficult conversation, treatment for ADHD, or a change in circumstances that genuinely aren't working. Sometimes it is connected with trauma or experiences that taught the nervous system that the world isn't particularly safe. And sometimes it is protecting something more vulnerable underneath—fear of rejection, failure, loss, shame, loneliness or not being good enough.

That is why I don't particularly like the idea of simply “getting rid of anxiety.” Certainly we want anxiety to become less intrusive when it is interfering with someone's life, but I also want to understand it.

What is it reacting to? What keeps it going? What has it learned? What does it think would happen if it relaxed? And what might help it discover that it doesn't have to work quite so hard anymore?

Learning to Turn Down the Volume

Successful therapy doesn't necessarily mean never feeling anxious again. I'm not sure that would even be desirable. Anxiety is part of the equipment we came with.

The goal is more often to turn down the volume and increase our freedom of choice. We notice anxiety sooner. We recognize when worry has stopped being useful. We become better at tolerating uncertainty. We learn ways of settling the body. We understand the situations that activate us, and perhaps most importantly, we stop automatically assuming that feeling anxious means something terrible is about to happen.

Over time, something that once felt like an emergency can begin to feel more like information: My anxiety is here. Something has activated it. Let's see what's happening.

That is a very different relationship with anxiety.

So if your mind won't switch off, rather than beginning with “How do I make this stop?”, it may be worth trying a slightly different question:

“What is my anxiety trying to do for me—and is there another way I can take care of what it's worried about?”

Sometimes that question opens a much more useful door.

— Rory Batchilder, M.Ed., RP, CCC
Registered Psychotherapist & Canadian Certified Counsellor