What triggers anxiety?

I was asked recently what triggers people’s nervous system into hyper or hypo arousal? When I work with clients I encourage them to remove the judgement of ’that's a silly worry, of course I know it won’t happen' and instead encourage them to consider that their nervous system has been triggered for a reason, that it is triggered by threat to self or connection to others and so let's not dismiss our nervous system (as it is does a really good job) but look at what the threat may be. So for example if someone says something like ‘I keep thinking that something terrible will happen to my children’ I will gently inquire as ‘what is the threat here?’ This is threat to connection and a very real connection, indeed one of the most powerful connections. Studies have shown that parents protect children over their own personal safety (so connection ’trumps’ personal safety). So this is a huge threat. I will share ‘no wonder your nervous system is responding in this way. Let's try and calm in down a little’. And then we can do a few exercises to regulate the nervous system.

So the focus isn’t on how not logical the thought is but how powerful that threat feels and how it has triggered the nervous system. Once we are a bit more regulated we can then explore how that threat feel now? Usually I find the threat is reduced once the nervous system is a bit more regulated and then we can explore the underlying worry about what will happen to my children a little more.

Now the second part, why do some people trigger more than others? This can often be seen in how wide their window of tolerance is (Dan Siegel writes extensively about this). So this is the state of nervous system arousal that feels ok to be in. This is often developed through coregulation in childhood and through having emotional attunement. If we didn’t get this, or if maybe we had some neglect (not necessarily in a scary way, working parents may emotionally neglect their child even if they are working to do the best for their child). Then this window of tolerance doesnt have much space to widen and so things will be more triggering. Also of course anyone that has encountered a trauma has been shown very much that the world isn’t safe so the nervous system responds and says I need to be more vigilent. Now also added to that that trauma can happen in-vitro (so if mother is threatened, birth problems) and also studies are showing that trauma can also be passed down the generations you can see that most people will have very different window of tolerances.

Now how then do you widen this window off tolerance. I think for me this is often the key role of therapy. Sitting in regulation with another. I do though think psycho education helps, being able to notice what is going on and learn about why it is that way. Often we are not very compassionate to our anxiety as it gets in the way which then of course tends to make it worse and we try to argue with it (more threat activation here)