Other Roots of Anxiety

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 anxiety lives in other areas. It can grow out of our relationships, our family culture, and the circumstances we're living in.

Over the next few posts, I want to dig into where else anxiety comes from and how it gets played out in the present moment.

Attachment history influence. 

Anxiety that isn't related to what's happening right now. It comes from learning early on in life that closeness could disappear.

Family systems and intergenerational patterns.

Anxiety can be a role a member occupies in a family. It can also be something transmitted across generations through silence, through unspoken rules, through grief that was never fully processed.

Financial precarity. 

Anxiety rooted in not knowing if there's going to be enough money to pay the bills, food, or anything else. It feels like you're waiting for something else unexpected to happen at any moment.

None of this is meant to replace what we already know about thoughts and nervous systems. Those frameworks are foundational for good reason. These are also members of the anxiety family.

My hope with this series is to share that anxiety has other roots. One of these may resonate with you, or more than one. Sometimes knowing helps you gain a different kind of perspective.

Next up: why your anxiety might be older than your current relationship.