On Anxiety and Agitation

The kind of agitation that I wrote about in my last post can serve a variety of purposes in the inner economy of emotion. It is a stimulant, in the sense that it produces and is produced by increased levels of adrenalin in one’s body. This process can be helpful in situations where we need an extra bit of energy to protect ourselves or to complete a task. It can also have detrimental effects, especially if one lives in a fairly chronic, possibly unperceived state of heightened alertness. It is possible to exist in a manner comparable to that of a bird or small mammal, much of our energy focused on scanning the environment (physical and social) for any hint of threat, ready to react. Chronic stimulation of this nature depletes our bodies, however, and over time can compromise our immune systems. Moreover, it limits the scope of our lives, the capacity we have for taking risks, whether in personal relationships or in other areas. It also lessens our capacity for more deeply knowing and understanding our own selves. 

Focused as we are upon the possibility of threat, we have not the inner leisure and calm needed for self-reflection. We exist with a mentality and an emotional life not unlike that experienced by people living in a war zone. Life is lived, in a sense, within the confines of a state of emergency, with its concomitant stimulations, terrors, and despairs.

A reasonable enquiry from someone beginning to tune in to this dynamic within her body might be: how did I get this way? It’s an important question, but one that may never be fully or adequately answered. Nor is a full answer essential to change or healing. Information of this nature can be interesting, perhaps even enlightening, and can to a certain extent assist change. In and of itself, however, it cannot bring about the transformation of body and mind that is needed to liberate a sufferer from debilitating anxiety and the agitation that it produces. Early in my work with someone I ask her for a general description of the emotional climate within which she was raised. Who were the members of her family? How did they relate to one another and to her? How were conflict and anger managed within the household? In what manner was discipline maintained? Moving more and more deeply into the marrow of the client’s answers of these and other queries, over time we conduct a kind of archeological expedition through the heart and history of her background. We seek an understanding and delineation of the influences that have contributed in myriad ways to her formation and in a sense constitute the framework of the person that she is now in her present life.

Some clever person has come up with an analogy likening the world in which we develop to a fish bowl. Fish breathe in and out the water that surrounds them, drawing into their bodies whatever nutrients and pollutants it contains. From the earliest moments of our existence, certainly in the womb, we are permeated with whatever of good or ill circulates within our mother’s being. As our nervous systems develop receptivity, we are affected not only by the foods ingested by her, but also by the emotional climate in which she dwells. When that space is charged with fears – from conditions of war, extreme poverty, domestic conflict, or from irrational reactions to imagined threats – her anxiety and its hormonal concomitants are in the same manner made a formative part of our being. As very young children, before our brains have developed cognitively, we experience the same instinctive responses to threat as any mammal. Loud noises, yelling, fighting in our vicinity, the face of an enraged parent close to ours, or sustaining blows for offenses we are incapable of understanding, can trigger feelings of real terror. It is not hard to see insecurity manifested in the stance and behavior of cats or dogs that have been frightened or mistreated when young. Our responses are similar to theirs. Threatening experiences or chronic, adverse conditions lay down physiological sensitivities to similar stimuli, even expanding to fields greater than those which have caused our responses.

No one has escaped frightening or hurtful experiences in their formative years, but there is clearly a wide spectrum of the severity and persistence of these events. The extent to which we are affected relies on where we lie on that spectrum, as well as on other factors. People differ vastly in their temperamental make-ups. Some are constitutionally more able to deal with stress than others. Location in the family structure can play a role, as can many other factors such as the degree of support given by other members of the family or community. Genetics also is important: we can be more or less susceptible to mental health difficulties as our experiences intersect with any underlying predisposition to these troubles. Teasing out the threads that have woven the matrix of someone’s anxiety is not a simple task, but a perspective on various pieces can often help a person to better understand what they are dealing with and even prompt strategies for diminishing its effects.