Anxiety Treatment and Healing Developmental Trauma
Anxiety is a symptom.
During a frightening experience, the automatic biological response of the body is to activate the sympathetic nervous system. This response is commonly called the fight or flight response. During the time of fight or flight, emotional experiences are also activating. For example, when you are startled you might feel the emotion of shock, together with the instinctive fight or flight response. If the distress of the experience is not resolved, the fight or flight instinct becomes locked with the emotional experience, creating a stable bond.
Anxiety is created by unhealed life experiences.
This means that until the distress is resolved, that there is a chronic association with an emotional experience and the activated fight or flight response of the body. A multitude of unresolved experiences of distress, will create a condition of anxiety, as the nervous system becomes wired to continuously express the presence of threat.
Negative Beliefs Support Anxiety
Negative self-image can result in anxiety. Our early life experiences shape our brains (biology) and self-image (psychology). Low self-esteem can lead to feeling anxious and works in a feedback loop. The way that a parent responds to a child’s emotional life can greatly impact the way that a child comes to believe in themselves in adulthood.
Childhood experiences can program a child to believe that they do not matter, that their worth is linked to productivity, that expressing or privately feeling certain emotions makes one a bad person. Because of the negative consequences associated with these negative beliefs, a chronic fight or flight response will be active creating sensations, feelings and thoughts of anxiety.
The difference between coping and healing
Unhealed life experiences (meaning distressing life experiences that were not resolved) impact daily life in surprising ways. Coping with anxiety means tolerating the discomfort and seeking ways to soothe, or avoid the pain that the anxiety causes. This can work in short term cases, but long term coping leads to unhealthy life habits, unsatisfying relationships, and stunted goals. Healing anxiety and healing developmental trauma, means working consciously with the thought energy, emotional energy, and instinctive energy that is creating discomfort of pain.
Anxiety Treatment
Many of my clients believe that it is necessary to know why something is making them feel anxious in order to heal it. This is not the case! Anxiety is a biological experience, that lives along with emotional and mental patterns. The brain is changing all the time according to your experiences, and learning how to keep you safe. We make decisions all the time about what is safe, and what is not safe often unconsciously. This learning is translated into neurological associations, where the brain is said to be wired. The brain can either wire in such a way that you experience a baseline or calm, or a baseline of stress. Stress baseline brains are most often created between the ages of 0-7 years old, however can also be created throughout longterm chronic stress in adulthood.
The Connection Between Anxiety Treatment and Healing Developmental Trauma
Unresolved distress that is commonly called developmental trauma or complex post traumatic stress disorder, is often a root cause of anxiety. Trauma records in the body in a certain order, and is also released in a particular order.
Healing anxiety and healing developmental trauma are very similar processes, that involve the release of the active fight or flight instincts from the biological self. This brings emotional and mental relief straight away, that opens the way to create new neurological wiring that is based on wellbeing rather than on fear, and psychic space for personal transformation.
