Anxiety

What If It Is Trying to Help?

Anxiety can be exhausting. It may leave you feeling constantly alert, unable to settle or caught in cycles of worry. It can also appear physically: a racing heart, tight chest, shallow breathing, dizziness, nausea, sweating, trembling, muscle tension or difficulty sleeping. You might struggle to concentrate, repeatedly imagine what could go wrong, seek reassurance or avoid people and situations that feel overwhelming.

Anxiety takes different forms. Generalised anxiety can involve persistent worry across many areas of life. Social anxiety may centre on being judged, rejected or exposed in front of others. Health anxiety can lead to heightened monitoring of physical sensations and repeated fears about illness. Some people experience panic attacks—sudden, intense episodes of fear accompanied by powerful physical symptoms. Anxiety may also attach itself to particular places, objects or situations, or arise in response to traumatic experiences. These descriptions can overlap, and each person’s experience is different.

When anxiety becomes intrusive, the understandable response is often: “How do I make it stop?” Therapy can certainly help to reduce its intensity. From a relational Transactional Analysis—or TA—perspective, however, we might also ask a different question:

What is the anxiety trying to do for you?

Anxiety is part of our internal protection system. It alerts us to threat and prepares us to respond. Sometimes the danger is immediate and recognisable. At other times, the alarm may be connected to earlier experiences, relationships or ways of coping that developed when we had fewer choices.

Perhaps you learnt to anticipate other people’s moods, avoid conflict, perform well or keep everyone happy. Being vigilant may once have helped you feel safer, maintain an important relationship or avoid criticism and rejection. The original circumstances may have changed, but your mind and body can continue to use the same protective strategy.

Therapy offers a way of understanding these patterns through the different states from which we think, feel and behave. An anxious inner dialogue may carry the voice of a critical or worried Parent: “You must get this right” or “Something bad will happen.” A frightened or highly adapted Child part may respond by becoming compliant, perfectionistic, withdrawn or overwhelmed. This can make it harder to access the Adult part of ourselves that can assess what is happening now, consider our options and respond to present-day reality.

This does not mean that anxiety is imaginary or that we should simply accept its impact. It means recognising that a response which now restricts your life may have developed for an understandable reason. Anxiety may be working very hard to protect you, even when its assessment of danger is no longer accurate.

Relational therapy explores these patterns not only by talking about them, but by noticing how they emerge between therapist and client. You may worry about being judged, getting therapy “right,” disappointing me or revealing too much. When we approach these experiences together with curiosity rather than criticism, the therapeutic relationship can offer an opportunity to experience something different: being taken seriously without needing to perform, hide or take care of the other person.

Over time, anxiety can become less of an enemy to defeat and more of a signal to understand. In therapy, we can explore what activates it, what it expects might happen and what you need in those moments. The aim is not necessarily a life without anxiety, but greater freedom: the ability to recognise the alarm, understand its history and choose how you want to respond now.

If something here resonates with you, I welcome you to get in touch to arrange an initial conversation. This gives us an opportunity to talk about what you are experiencing, what you might hope for from therapy and whether working together feels right for you.