Why You Feel Anxious: The Truth About Emotions

Emotions are at the center of everything we experience. They give our lives meaning and purpose and shape our relationships, reflect our values, and hold our history. And yet, most of us were never really taught how to understand or feel them.

We tend to think of emotions as simple and separate experiences: We learn that sadness is one thing, and that anger is another. We're often told we can only feel one emotion at a time. Additionally, our culture teaches us that uncomfortable emotions are bad, and that we should get rid of them with pills or distractions.

But emotions are messengers; they’re here to help us understand ourselves. And they’re incredibly layered. They build on each other, especially when it comes to the more uncomfortable emotions like anger, sadness, shame, or disappointment. Underneath all of them is fear, specifically, the fear of loss.

We become afraid of losing control, approval, attention, and ultimately, love.

Each of these challenging emotions show up to protect us from that loss, and each one works in different ways. Anger, for example, is more energizing and moves us into action while sadness is more heavy and slows us down.

Depending on how we grew up, we learned to express the emotion that felt safest. Maybe you grew up in a home where sadness wasn’t okay so you learned to express fear through anger. Or maybe anger wasn’t safe, so your fear came out through sadness.

But sometimes, we learn that all emotions are unsafe. This is where anxiety comes in: Anxiety arises when we’re afraid to feel our emotions. It is fear layered on top of fear. First, there's the original fear of loss. Then the emotions that show up to protect us from that loss. And finally, there’s the fear of feeling those emotions.

That’s what anxiety often is: it’s the buildup of unfelt emotions. Our body becomes like a pressure cooker, and when there’s too much energy inside, all these symptoms start to emerge: We feel tight and tense, we can’t fall asleep, we get headaches and our mind spins and spirals. This is all a result of tightly packing the emotions into the body and simultaneously trying to escape them.

So if we want to truly heal from anxiety, we have to go to the root. We have to explore our fear of feeling and uncover the emotions we’ve been running from. And eventually, we have to explore our original fear of loss.

This isn’t just an intellectual process; we actually have to learn how to feel our emotions by connecting with the sensations in the body, because emotions are physical. They’re not just thoughts or ideas; they are sensations.

This is how we heal. Not by getting rid of our anxiety and “fixing” ourselves, but by being willing to enter into the ocean of fear that’s built up behind us, so we can see that it’s actually a part of us. It’s not something outside of us, it’s a protective part that has desperately tried to keep us safe. Once we realize this, a lot of appreciation and compassion enters the picture. We see that all along, we had our own back, because we are our fiercest protector.

So this is really a process of coming back and returning to who we are. It’s a process of honoring the incredibly complex and creative protective mechanisms meant to keep us safe, and then thanking them, and ultimately, stepping out of them so we can see the larger picture.

Wishing you well,

Sophia

If you're looking for an anxiety coach to help you identify the beliefs and patterns that keep you stuck so you can reconnect with yourself and develop a more balanced relationship with your emotions, and your body, I'd love to work with you. I offer 1:1 sessions and couples coaching, as well as a Relationship Anxiety package. You're welcome to book a session or package by clicking the “Book Now” button at the top of the page.