Table of contents:
- What is anxiety and the symptoms it presents
- Why do I have anxiety for no apparent reason
- Why do they give anxiety attacks?
- The origin of anxiety
- The causes of anxiety
- 1. The negative assessment of the person himself
- 2. Irrational beliefs
- 3. An event triggers a negative thought
- 4. Judgments about ourselves
- 5. Early experiences
- 6. Conditioning the emotional response
- 7. The experiences
- 8. Cognitive distortions
- 9. The survival function
- 10. The emotional memory of the amygdala
- How to relieve anxiety
- 1. Relaxation techniques
- 2. Attention training
- 3. Self-control techniques
- 4. Introspection
- 5. Psychotherapy: self-awareness and self-esteem
Anxiety is a normal and functional emotional that allows a quick response in favor of the survival of the individual in dangerous or demanding situations. The problem comes when anxiety is not managed properly and appears in an exaggerated and useless way. In these cases it tends to overwhelm the person who presents it, who often does not know the origin, reasons and causes of anxiety.
In this Psychology-Online article you will find all the information necessary to understand why anxiety occurs as well as 5 keys to alleviate it.
You may also be interested in: Anxiety to eat sweet: causes and treatment Index- What is anxiety and the symptoms it presents
- Why do I have anxiety for no apparent reason
- Why do they give anxiety attacks?
- The origin of anxiety
- The causes of anxiety
- How to relieve anxiety
What is anxiety and the symptoms it presents
At any time in our life an unexpected event can occur that we interpret as dangerous, threatening or harmful and cause an anxiety attack: tachycardia, palpitations, chest tightness, shortness of breath, feeling dizzy and unsteadily, tremors, sweating, " knot "in the stomach, nausea, dry mouth, etc.
In most cases this psychosomatic reaction is justified, it is the natural and adaptive response of our body to danger.
Why do I have anxiety for no apparent reason
Sometimes, we are faced with an event that takes place within the normality of daily life and that, suddenly and for no apparent reason (does not present danger or threat), produces a strong emotional impact and an excessive anxiety attack that does not It can be attributed to no specific cause (unlike phobias in which the anxiety attack arises when the stimulus that activates it occurs, or in post-traumatic stress when some fact in the environment reminds the person of the traumatic event suffered).
Why do they give anxiety attacks?
Moments later we react and wonder why this impact and we realize that, although the event could have some disturbing connotation, we did not find a reason that justifies the intense physiological response that has been triggered and we came to the conviction that it should not have been activated the emotional alarm, or at least, not so intensely. Given this, it is normal to wonder why anxiety occurs and what are its causes. Why does this phenomenon occur? Why does an apparently inconsequential event generate a physiological reaction with the intensity that one with a greater emotional charge would?
The origin of anxiety
Anxiety can arise spontaneously in different situations of daily life that appear inconsequential and do not have an appreciable emotional charge and that, however, provoke an intense emotional reaction in the person. Given that the origin of this anxiety cannot be associated with the external stimulus, since it does not present danger, threat or immediate damage to physical integrity, we must look for the origin within the person, that is, accept that it is the psychological ego itself (the self or oneself ) which has been threatened or violated. It can be said that although the spark that starts the “emotional fire” is in the external stimulus, the main focus of it is internal.
A typical example of this phenomenon is observed when our intervention in an event has not been very successful, or when we interact with a person, either during a conversation or in a spontaneous and accidental relationship, and they emit a negative comment, a reproach, a call to attention on the conduct carried out, a negative criticism, etc. towards us and, in those moments, we perceive an anxiety attack caused by the activation of some negative emotion.
In these cases, although various emotions can be activated, the most significant are the so-called self-conscious or self-evaluating emotions: shame, guilt and pride, which are usually associated with others such as fear, anger or disgust. Although pride is normally a positive emotion (satisfaction for having achieved something important), sometimes it can appear as negative (arrogance, haughtiness, deification, haughtiness, conceit, egotism, narcissism, etc.).
These emotions arise when there is a positive or negative assessment of the person in relation to a series of criteria about what constitutes adequate action in various areas, and they have in common that the intensity they present is not congruent with the negative characteristics that they could be attributed to the event itself.
The causes of anxiety
Below are the 10 reasons why anxiety exists, why it is triggered in unexpected situations and why sometimes it becomes dysfunctional and is a problem for the person who presents it. The causes of anxiety are the following:
1. The negative assessment of the person himself
The cause of the anxiety reaction that underlies these assumptions is the one that links them to the self-perception and assessment of the psychological ego of the person who has been threatened or harmed by the event that occurred: loss of self-esteem, feeling of guilt, sense of responsibility. responsibility, attack on beliefs and vital values such as freedom, trust, justice, respect, etc.
2. Irrational beliefs
It therefore has to do with the vulnerability of the person to a certain stimulus from the environment that negatively affects some deeply rooted beliefs: "I have to do everything right", "the opinion of others is important to me", "it is unfair what what's happening to me ”,“ I must assume my responsibilities ”,“ they can't treat me like this ”, etc.
3. An event triggers a negative thought
The origin of this specific vulnerability that “wakes up” suddenly and unjustifiably to the event that occurred may be related to the association of the current event with a past one, that is, the cause of the anxiety attack would not be the current event itself, but its relation to some negative experience of the past with which it is related. Therefore, there must exist in the event produced "something" (a kind of signal or marker) related to the Self and stored in the autobiographical memory that has triggered the emotional alteration suffered.
4. Judgments about ourselves
The experiences are stored and contain labels that identify them and serve to remember them (they activate the neural network that represents them), so this current event may have presented some of these labels, causing the activation of the emotional system. In this sense, it must be taken into account that self-evaluating emotions have as a precedent some kind of judgment of the person about their own actions, that is, we make a negative assessment about some personal or own aspect, some action that we have taken. And this self-assessment does not have to be conscious or explicit, we do not necessarily have to realize that it is happening.
5. Early experiences
The genesis of this association would be in a first event (usually during childhood, although it can also occur at any time in our lives) in which, despite not being of great importance, specific personal circumstances (lack of attachment and affection, feeling of abandonment or rejection, low self-esteem, depressed mood, etc.) that caused a strong impact on the psychological ego (for example, feeling humiliated, ashamed, defamed) and caused a very intense emotional reaction that would be accompanied by thoughts like: "what I have done is wrong", "it was my fault", "I made the most horrible ridicule" "they have hurt my pride", "I am not at their level", etc. and it would be recorded in the emotional memory.
6. Conditioning the emotional response
This overexcitation of the emotional system generated in the person a hypersensitivity of the emotional system to this event that makes him very vulnerable to it, causing a predisposition to emotional reactions of guilt, shame, fear, distrust, etc. before events where this Self was affected, so that, when a second event occurs later that contains some element or factor (a label or marker) that is also represented in the original event, the emotional system identifies it as if it were this and it provokes the same response that it generated in its day, without this activation coming from the current interpretation of it made by the cognitive system.
In this case, we could speak of a learning process in which the person "learns" this emotional response by associating both events through the common label or marker, and will thus react automatically in other similar situations. It would be a kind of conditioned learning (Pavlovian conditioning is a basic form of learning that is based on the association of emotional responses to new situations).
One of the most important characteristics of this type of learning is that it involves automatic or reflex responses, not voluntary behaviors (the anxiety associated with a natural stimulus that generated fear, for example an accident, is transferred to another stimulus by conditioning. evidence in favor of direct experiences of conditioning, especially for agoraphobia and claustrophobia, which are frequently caused by past traumatic experiences). Based on the above, it can be said that the shame, guilt or hurt pride experienced now, would be conditioned by a pre-existing event.
7. The experiences
It has been shown that the life experiences that generate mental phenomena (perceptions, thoughts, emotions, feelings, intentions, etc.) leave a mark on our neural network system, that is, there is a physiological correlate of the experience and, in addition, that the Similar experiences are interconnected, so that these traces can be reactivated when the current experience resembles the original, even if the similarity is not complete (which is why part of the current concern is the memory of previous moments).
8. Cognitive distortions
On the other hand, the vulnerability of the person and the intensity of the emotional response to these stimuli can be aggravated if cognitive distortions are involved (personalization, catastrophism, selective perception, etc.) or the person is in an altered state of mind (anxious-depressive), since some negative thoughts have more or less force depending on the emotional state and the perspective that we have at the time they appear.
9. The survival function
One feature that accompanies this phenomenon is that, despite being convinced of the minor importance of the event, we cannot voluntarily stop the intense emotional activation produced. We continue to feel bad, the unpleasant physical symptoms do not disappear and the memory of the event becomes a disturbing thought that intrudes into the reality of the present moment, interfering with our attention to what we do, see or hear (affects the content of working memory or work and does not let us concentrate on what we are doing: studying, working, talking, observing a landscape, a movie, etc.) because there is an overlap in our state of consciousness between the representation of the external reality that we perceive at all times with our senses and that of the disturbing thought about the event that occurred (internal reality that struggles to dominate the external one) thus causing the mental state of confusion and mental fog that bothers us so much.
It must be borne in mind that the emotional system is designed to process information, evaluate it and formulate a response quickly given the threatening situation, giving preference to facing the situation over other less urgent tasks, that is why it interferes in thoughts and normal actions such as a recurring and dominant thought to prevent us from being distracted and focusing on what threatens us.
10. The emotional memory of the amygdala
From the physiological point of view, the difficulty in consciously and voluntarily deactivating emotional activation and anxiety has to do with one of the brain structures involved in the phenomenon: the tonsil complex. The neurophysiologist Joseph Ledoux points out that the amygdala does not require a conscious stimulus to activate and highlights the importance of the direct communication pathway of the thalamus with the amygdala in emotional reactions. This pathway allows emotional responses to be initiated in the amygdala before we are aware of the stimulus that makes us react or we identify the sensations experienced, which can be interpreted as evidence that there is precognitive emotional processing.
The primal emotional memory is stored in the amygdala and has enormous adaptive value. The function of this tonsillar complex in relation to this phenomenon is:
- In the amygdala, the evaluation process of the emotional importance of a specific stimulus takes place based on previous experiences with it, coins the experience as very harmful and strengthens the neural connections that form the psychic imprint that represents it.
- The amygdala is related to learning and maintaining the emotional meaning of sensory signals. You can recall the stimuli associated with a disturbing experience, so that on future exposures to the stimuli, the response is activated more efficiently.
- The amygdala also affects the structuring of memories by associating memories with emotional states, facilitating a greater connection and fixation of the elements to remember, thus allowing their consolidation.
Here you can see more information about the amygdala and the emotional nervous system.
How to relieve anxiety
To face this disturbing situation and calm anxiety, the following keys are necessary:
1. Relaxation techniques
The action should be directed in the first place to reduce anxiety through some of the relaxation techniques. We must understand and accept that the first emotional impact cannot be avoided since it originates in the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system and we cannot act on it by will (most of the emotional activity of the brain is produced in a non-existent way). volitional).
2. Attention training
Under normal conditions, if we avoid thinking about the event, the emotional disturbance will diminish over time (unless we think about it constantly and it becomes a recurring thought that will keep the emotional system activated). For this, it is advisable to focus our attention on other things, thus avoiding disturbing thinking (following the method of the psychologist W. Mischel of " strategic allocation of attention " as a self-control technique). The less time the thought remains in the memory, the less it will interfere in our daily lives and little by little the unpleasant psychosomatic effects will be diluted. Attention can be trained with meditation techniques such as mindfulness.
3. Self-control techniques
One issue to bear in mind is that in people with an easily excitable temperament, the emotion triggered by the event is usually accompanied by anger, hostility or indignation and generates an automatic response of " counterattack " towards the person who "apparently" has attacked. his Psychological Self, leading to conflict situations that worsen the situation. In these cases the person should learn to repress the impulse of violent reaction towards the other through self-control techniques.
4. Introspection
Thinking away can be a quick and effective solution for the moment, but the acquired hypersensitivity of the emotional system to these disturbing stimuli will persist for future situations. That is why it would be interesting to identify what emotion we feel and discover what is the factor of the psychological I that has been violated in the event (self-esteem, feeling of guilt or responsibility, personal beliefs, etc.). Later we will have to find out what event in our life had a very great emotional impact at that time and established the neural connections that are activated now in similar events.
5. Psychotherapy: self-awareness and self-esteem
The moment we know the reason for the activation of the emotional system and we identify the emotion we feel, we begin to face the problem. We keep a distance between the I and the disturbing memory (it is interesting here to be able to distinguish, as suggested by William James, between the "I" as an observer and the "Me" as the object of the experience , that is, between the I that is undergoing the attack anxiety and the conscious ego that observes this anxious state and does not allow itself to be dominated by it). Finally, it would be convenient to introduce some cognitive therapy technique that reduces this hypersensitivity and vulnerability to this type of situation.
This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
If you want to read more articles similar to Causes of anxiety, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical Psychology.
Bibliography- Kandel, ER (2001). Principles of neuroscience . McGraw-Hill Interamericana. Madrid.
- LeDoux, J. (1999). The emotional brain . Ed. Ariel-Planeta. Barcelona
- Lewis, M. (2000). Self-conscious emotions: Embarrassment, pride, shame, and guilt . New York: The Guilford Press.
- Pavlov, I. (1997). Conditioned Reflexes . Morata Editions. Madrid.