ETG - Therapy services in East Nashville
Get Started

Anxiety and the Brain (Part 1): My Personal Anxiety Experience

My Personal Experience Having an Anxious Brain

I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t have anxiety. My earliest memories are rife with fear even though I had a physically very safe, suburban middle class family life. When I was a kid in the 90s, nobody was talking about anxiety disorders, least of all my conservative Christian parents.

In grad school I remember reading through the Anxiety Disorders chapter in the DSM-5 and coming across the criteria for Separation Anxiety Disorder and feeling so seen. There was my childhood described in black and white! I have come to understand a lot about anxiety and the brain.

Childhood: Separation Anxiety Disorder

Here are some of the descriptors of Separation Anxiety Disorder (from MayoClinic.org) that feel particularly relevant to me: 

  • Repeated and intense distress when thinking about separation or when away from home or loved ones. This may include being clingy or having tantrums about separation that last longer or are more severe than other kids of the same age.

  • Constant, intense worry about losing a parent or other loved one to an illness, death, or a disaster or harm coming to them.

  • Constant worry that something bad will happen, such as being lost or kidnapped, causing separation from parents or other loved ones.

  • Not wanting to or refusing to be away from home because of fear of separation.

  • Not wanting to be home alone or somewhere without a parent or other loved one close by, if the child has reached an age where being alone might be expected.

  • Not wanting to or refusing to sleep away from home or to go to sleep without a parent or other loved one nearby, if the child has reached an age where these activities might be expected.

  • Repeated nightmares about separation.

Being an Anxious Kiddo is Hard

I was terrified of my mom leaving me and my siblings alone in the car for a minute while she ran into the gas station to pay for the gas or get milk. She was going to get shot in there! The car would accidentally shift into drive and we would slide down the hill and die! I was like three years old.

This kind of thing was constantly on my mind. I remember countless nights when I had trouble falling asleep and I would go to my mom with my anxieties – “I’m afraid the house will burn down while I’m sleeping,” “I’m scared I will wake up blind” “I’m worried we’ll get robbed while I’m asleep” and my mom didn’t dismiss me out of hand but she didn’t really help me either. She hugged me and prayed with me and sent me back to bed (That was the extent of help for my anxiety until my 20s when I started therapy) – “Have you tried praying about it? Let’s pray about it. God doesn’t want you to be afraid. He hasn’t given you a spirit of fear!” (Um, he most definitely had. Or if not him, someone had given me that spirit).

Adulthood: Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Most children age out of Separation Anxiety Disorder and that was absolutely the case with me too. I moved straight into Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Here are some symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder that resonated the most with me (from MayoClinic.org).

  • Persistent worrying or anxiety about a number of areas that are out of proportion to the impact of the events

  • Overthinking plans and solutions to all possible worst-case outcomes

  • Perceiving situations and events as threatening, even when they aren’t

  • Difficulty handling uncertainty

  • Indecisiveness and fear of making the wrong decision

  • Inability to set aside or let go of a worry

  • Inability to relax, feeling restless, and feeling keyed up or on edge

For a long time, I genuinely assumed everyone was like this but looking back, none of my four other siblings displayed these fears or symptoms. It wasn’t until I started seeing clients as an intern in grad school that I really got to see that no, not everyone is like this. It still surprises me sometimes because it’s all I’ve ever known.

Understanding Anxiety and the Brain

I started seeing a therapist in my mid-twenties and that changed my life for the better. I have had a huge decrease in my anxiety. But even now, 10+ years later, the anxiety isn’t magically gone, I still have to work on it daily. Here’s what I know that I didn’t know then about anxiety and the brain: Praying about it would never be enough. Telling myself to “just stop worrying about it” would always fail. Why? Because you can’t solve a limbic system problem (anxiety) with the prefrontal cortex (logic). 

Let me explain what that means. Our brain isn’t just one big thing, it’s made up of many different systems that have different functions – very cool. A lot of these parts function together but some function entirely separately, meaning certain parts can’t override one another and those parts also might have opposing agendas.

The PFC and the Limbic System

I want to focus on two specific parts: the prefrontal cortex (PFC) – this is the human brain, the logical brain. It’s in charge of things like logic, analysis, planning and self-control. The other part is the limbic system – the emotional brain, the mammal brain. This is all about motivation, emotion, and memories.

I’m not a neuroscientist by any means but here’s what I know about how these two parts of the brain work together – they don’t. They are very busy working separately and are often at odds and give us competing advice which is confusing. The PFC can go slow, analyze, flesh things out. The limbic system goes fast – emotion happens in 6/10 of one second! – and is impulsive and largely unconscious. If you say something like “I just feel it in my gut” you are talking about limbic system processing.

The ideal, in my opinion, is that we help these systems work together. Understanding how our brains work can be so helpful because we better understand how to help ourselves when we are anxious. See more info in Part 2! 

Elizabeth Baum, MA, LPC (Temp), is a Pre-Licensed Staff Therapist at Experience Therapy Group working with adults, teens and couples. For more content about the intersection of life and therapy, you can find Elizabeth at @therapy.adjacent.

References 

More Posts

Share:

Send Us A Message

Skip to content