How to manage anxiety by understanding your brain

Understanding Anxiety

Anxiety is part of the normal range of emotions we experience as humans. For some people, it becomes a problem when it stops them doing the things they want or need to do, or leads to behaviours that aren’t in their best interests.

Understanding anxiety — and how it comes from a basic human survival mechanism — can help us respond in ways that allow us to manage it, so it doesn’t get in the way of our lives.

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Anxiety as a Survival Response

One way people often explain anxiety is through an analogy. Imagine someone living in the Stone Age, living in a hut and hunting for food. They’re walking along with their club when they suddenly come across a scary animal — let’s say a sabre-toothed tiger.

In that moment, this prehistoric person needs to quickly prepare to defend themselves so they don’t come to harm, or even die. Like us, they have adrenal glands near their kidneys. One of the main jobs of the adrenal glands is to release a hormone called adrenaline, which prepares the body to react in danger.

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What Happens in the Body

Adrenaline triggers lots of changes in the body. Some of these are instantly visible — for example, the hairs on the body standing up. This is thought to have made our Stone Age ancestors look bigger and more threatening.

At the same time, blood is redirected to essential areas like the heart, lungs and muscles, and away from others. This can make people look pale as blood moves away from the skin, or feel queasy when it moves away from the gut.

The heart speeds up to supply the body with extra oxygen, as breathing becomes faster than usual. Thoughts may begin to race as the person becomes hyper-alert, scanning for danger or information about the situation. This is also why pupils dilate.

All of these changes prepare the Stone Age person to decide whether to fight the tiger or run away — and then to do so as effectively as possible.

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Anxiety in the Modern World

Today, we don’t live in a world where we regularly face life-threatening predators. In most everyday anxiety-inducing situations, it isn’t helpful to fight or run away, and we’re not forced to make instant survival decisions.

Despite this, our bodies haven’t lost the adrenaline response because it’s so deeply ingrained in us. That isn’t a weakness — it’s an important part of our survival system — but it does mean we need to learn how to manage that response.

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Learning to Cope with Anxiety

Coping is about learning to work with anxiety and manage it. It involves developing strategies that help you cope and still do what you want or need to do, even when anxiety is present.

Many of these strategies are skills that you practise over time, so you’re better prepared when stressful or anxiety-inducing situations arise. The more you practise them when you feel calm and safe, the easier they are to access when you need them.

Knowing you have these strategies can also make new or stressful situations feel less threatening, because you trust that you’ll be able to cope if anxiety shows up.

Practical Coping Strategies

These skills don’t have to be complicated. They might include slowing down your breathing, trying progressive muscle relaxation (tensing and relaxing muscles one by one), or using guided imagery to picture a safe or special place.

All of these techniques send a message to your body — and to the systems affected by the surge of adrenaline — that there isn’t an immediate physical threat. With a calmer brain, it becomes easier to talk to others and make a plan for what to do next.

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Find Out More

You can find out more about managing anxiety — and why therapy sometimes involves facing your fears — on the Best For You website.