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What happens when anxiety isn't a distortion at all? What if it is an accurate read of genuinely unstable circumstances. When you don't know if you will be able to pay next month's rent, have food, or you're one unexpected expense away from a fiscial crisis, that isn't a distortion. That's anxiety doing exactly what it's built to do: to let us know when we are in danger. That's not just physical danger. What scarcity does to the mind When someone is preoccupied with not havin

In the last post, I wrote about anxiety rooted in attachment, something that can form early in life and stay with a person well into adulthood. There's another root that works a little differently. Sometimes the anxiety is a role that a family needs someone to occupy. How the role gets assigned When you grow up in a family where parents are unpredictable, sometimes you may feel that the family needs someone to keep things steady. That might mean being the one who problem solv

In the last post, I mentioned that anxiety has other roots beyond thoughts, the nervous system, or what's happening in front of you right now. One of those roots can be part of your attachment history. This anxiety develops early on in life when you learn that closeness could disappear, and that lesson can stay with you well into adulthood. This post is about what that looks like, and how it tends to build. How it began This pattern of inconsistent closeness early on in life

A short series on where else anxiety lies, beyond thoughts and the nervous system. If you've spent any time reading about anxiety lately, you've noticed three major focuses: your thoughts (catastrophizing, worry spirals), your nervous system (polyvagal theory, fight-flight-freeze), and the somatic symptoms that come with dysregulation (racing heart, tight chest, shallow breath). This content can be extremely helpful, and I use it in my own practice. What is also true is anxie

Read this blog article to gain insight into the experience of what it means to be an adult child of a parent who lives far away and the associated guilt.