The Anxiety Getaway. Craig April, Ph.D
more you avoid and battle your particular anxiety-inducing event, the more you solidify the lesson neurologically. In other words, you strengthen the neural pathway that connects your feared event to a question of your survival.
7.Now, whenever you approach your fearful stimuli, your brain floods your system with adrenaline and you associate this with fear. You then indulge in your accompanying fear-based thoughts. And you become anxious again!
8.It goes around and around, like a vicious feedback loop. One experience impacts the other. You become anxious and you fight or run from anxiety. This creates more anxiety as you dodge and resist, again and again.
At this point, it’s important for you to understand that anxiety is reinforced by avoidance and thrives through your fighting it. Through your battle against it. Through your resistance. If this isn’t crystal clear yet, it will be once you begin practicing the counterintuitive tools to follow. So to learn how to outsmart your brain’s false fear messages and claim your calm, just read on…
“For an impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations.”
—Paul Cezanne
“I was an overnight sensation.”
—Elvis
It’s important to emphasize that an adrenaline surge does not equal anxiety. However, it does often manifest as anxiety for so many anxiety sufferers, especially if one has attached a fear-based story to both the sensations and the attempts to fight their existence. As mentioned, this battle leads to hypervigilance—purposely seeking out said sensations—with the counterproductive goal of trying to force them out of being. In a nutshell, if you’re looking for trouble internally, you’re going to find it. Remember, what you resist, persists!
Don’t conflate adrenaline sensations with anxiety. They’re not the same thing, although those suffering with anxiety often define them as such. And this error is a huge precursor to the development of an anxiety disorder! Where else could consistently and erroneously judging your bodily sensations as bad or dangerous lead to but anxiety? And potential panic!
There are countless examples demonstrating that adrenaline and anxiety are not one and the same. Here are a handful of examples of adrenalized experiences, sans anxiety:
✻The adrenaline rush felt by a roller coaster lover at the top of the freefall
✻A bride’s adrenalized excitement on her wedding day
✻An MMA fighter blasting heavy metal to increase energy and aggression
✻A surfer’s adrenaline high while surfing a tube
✻The thrill of going out on a first date with someone you find super attractive
If adrenaline was equivalent to anxiety, then adrenaline junkies wouldn’t have so much fun engaging in death-defying activities like skydiving, base jumping, free climbing, river rafting, and eating peanut butter sandwiches without jelly (just making sure you’re still with me here!). In the book Heroic Efforts, Jennifer Lois reported that search and rescue volunteers have been shown to interpret their adrenaline rushes as not only exciting, but pleasurable. 1 Adrenaline junkies love the exhilaration of it all.
Consider astronauts. Astronauts have long been thought of as almost a different breed of human—free of typical anxiety and so brave. The truth is, though most of us would consider flying to the moon a brave act, if you aren’t afraid, you can’t be brave. Courage requires fear to label an act courageous. Were Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong afraid? You can bet that when they were the first to step onto the moon in 1969, adrenaline was flowing. Still, it seems they’ve never characterized this as an “anxious” experience, even with the uncertainty of what they would encounter on this strange terrain. In a recent interview, Buzz Aldrin mentioned being completely focused on the mission. 2 You can bet adrenaline, in part, was supplying that focus! If Neil Armstrong was anxious, he might have said something like, “Get me off this crazy boulder. I miss Earth. Mommy!” when first stepping onto the moon. Instead, he made the famous remark, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” (Though just a tip, Neil. Next time say “humankind”!).
Always remind yourself that adrenaline can be triggered by many experiences other than fear, such as an unfamiliar situation. The brain’s determination that the body requires energy or focus (like when in competition) can start up when engaged in any activity you find exciting or exhilarating, or when feeling overwhelmed, uncertain or, yes, afraid.
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