Anxiety is a fuel for action. Being anxious is unbearable, it makes you want to do something, anything that can relieve the pit in the stomach dread that something bad is imminent; and you have zero control. Anxiety is a sign of helplessness in the midst of threat. It propels you to act, to do something that can make you feel you aren’t just giving up and waiting for extinction.
Anxiety is a fuel for action because life feels topsy-turvy. Unpredictability, and unreliability coat you in a membrane of fear. Everything feels threatening and nothing is trustworthy. To cede control and believe that all will be okay sounds like a ruse.
Anxiety is a fuel for action – having to wait ignites huge anxiety, when you have insecure attachment
Sebastion a 42-year-old divorcee met an attractive, affable 42-year-old woman Dierdre, at a networking event. She seemed interested in meeting him for a date, and gave Sebastion her number. He contacted her the following day and asked her out. Then came the waiting game. An hour turned into two, three, all night and a day turned into another. With each passing minute Sebastion’s anxiety swirled and whirled into a tornado such that he couldn’t sit still, or concentrate on anything. Nothing registered as he scrolled his phone, zapped the TV channels, or listened to music. His stomach was in knots, his chest was tight, and the vice around his head was excruciating.
Anxiety shut down his frontal cortex, preventing him from thinking rationally. He became a bundle of nerves, with a dry mouth, frantic to have the comfort of a response that would absorb the masses of adrenalin that his body produced to prepare him to fight the existential threat of being ignored, rejected, and rendered valueless.
Anxiety is a fuel for action, and Sebastion acted. Scrolling the phone wasn’t enough. He began searching Social Media platforms to find links to Dierdre – maybe he would get clues as to whether she was available or not. When that didn’t work, he tidied up tons of old stuff in the garage (while still scrolling the phone), and when there was still radio silence, Sebastion texted Dierdre again. That did the trick. Reaching out calmed his nerves, slowed his breathing, and gave him an appetite for food and drink that had been cut off at the peak of his anxiety symptoms. Now he could think, read a bit, watch some shows, call a friend and be his normal self – except he had exchanged anxiety for shame. He had given into his anxiety and shown his neediness. Having feared being devalued by Dierdre not responding, he had devalued himself by giving in. Showering in shame was a relief from anxiety but when that became intolerable, anxiety became more tolerable. And so the cycle of anxiety and shame moved along.
Anxiety as a fuel for action – with positive and negative outcomes
Having insecure attachment meant that Sebastion doubted whether he existed for Dierdre, his current paramour – just like he never really knew whether his mother remembered his existence when she went to work before he went to school and came home when he was getting ready for bed. The echo with his need for immediate contact and physical proximity as a child, and then with girlfriends including his ex-wife was loud and reverberating. Any build up of insecurity meant that Sebastion felt untethered, unmoored, unwanted, unsafe, immaterial to those he had attached to and whom he needed to stabilize his emotions and survive.
Sometimes anxiety as a fuel for action led to doing things that had been put off for ages – a positive outcome – if only as a side effect. The main goal was to rid himself of the adrenalin that gave him a surfeit of energy with a message that he was under threat and was armored up.
Other times anxiety as a fuel for action leads to negative outcomes. The second and subsequent texts trying to establish contact with Dierdre made Sebastion feel even worse. The fuel was now turned into an attack on himself. He beat himself up with criticism for wanting to meet another woman after his divorce, dissing himself for thinking he had something to offer, and blaming himself for asking Diedre out in the first place. Thoughts about never bothering again, as it was hopeless, seeped in to make him feel safe in his solitary but reliable state.
Anxiety as a fuel in this negative outcome aggravated Sebastian’s insecure attachment, making him feel that the only safe thing was never to have relationships in order to avoid uncertainty, disappointment, and the unbearable lack of response. Avoiding all relationships to keep safe also soothed the shame of being needy and by reaching out to Dierdre the second and third time. Avoidance and isolation kept anxiety and shame at bay, providing a temporary but much needed sense of strength. Until the need for attachment reared its head again!
Anxiety is a fuel for action – regaining a sense of control and agency
By taking action, Sebastion felt like he wasn’t just a sitting duck, totally dependent on a response. As a little one he would get into his Lego building fantasizing about being with his mom; today he could clean out the mess in the garage, a symbol of cleansing the inner stress that was strangling him. By taking action and feeling movement, flow, and change, Sebastian regained a sense of being in charge. Sometimes he regretted it because it didn’t resolve anything, but tasting the sense of self-empowerment was worth it. It’s the taking of action, any action that negates the shaming sense of dependency, and enhances the sense of self-reliance.
Anxiety is a fuel for action – addressing symptoms versus sources
Almost everyone has felt anxious at some time or another, often at different intensities, wanting instant relief from the debilitating and confidence sapping experience. However, most approaches, treatments and strategies for anxiety management relate to the symptoms, not the source. Therefore for those whose source of anxiety is insecure attachment; the treatments are temporary and not curative or useful over time.
Most remedies and strategies for managing anxiety emphasize the importance of ‘staying in the present’, focusing on breathing and calming the mind through mindfulness and or meditation. But not all anxiety is amenable to being managed through these practices. These treatments are at best displacement strategies, not reparative of the sources that trigger the insecure anxiety.
Cognitive Treatments – letting go of control
Sebastion would benefit from understanding that he can’t control Diedre or anyone else. But it is just that – an understanding. It doesn’t reach the primal insecure attachment that triggers an existential threat of helplessness and abandonment, which is wired into the brain and reinforced several times over. When those circuits get activated by a non-responsive Dierdre and others, no amount of understanding that he can’t control her is going to make him stop enacting the same pattern of behaviors. An insecurely attached brain functions only in the fight/flight/fearful place, plugging away even if it doesn’t work, to ensure a sense of action in the face of extinction.
Getting Grounded by Focusing to Immediate Surroundings
Focusing on his immediate surroundings, and noticing what he can see, smell, hear, and touch may distract Sebastian for a bit, but it doesn’t unknot his abdominal muscles. The vice around his head may be less severe, and he may feel somewhat moored. However, his inner sense of being separated from his attachment figure and forgotten about or not important enough to recall, continues to rattle inside him – he isn’t going to be able to get rid of that source of anxiety and keep it that way. In other words focusing on the immediate surroundings is a displacement onto something else. Anxiety that arises from insecure – preoccupied and fearful attachment is an integral part of interpersonal relationship dynamics and will be expressed when poked at.
Attending to Breath
Taking deep breaths in and out activates the parasympathetic nervous system through the vagus nerve to redress the hyperactivity of the fight/flight/freeze anxiety phenomenon. Sebastion will feel less fueled to do something! His muscle tension may reduce as the adrenalin no longer pumps out. So, Sebastion’s symptoms may successfully abate, but his feelings of distress, rejection, and uncertainty of attachment remain, and will in a heartbeat get reactivated if he can’t get a response from an attachment figure.
Anxiety as a fuel for action – treatments and placebos versus therapy for earned secure attachment
A recent study published in the August 2024 issue of Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, found that treatment offered using Cognitive Strategies and Mindfulness based ones were successful in reducing anxiety, even if done remotely via the internet, and also if those treated knew that they were receiving a placebo (not the same cognitive and other regimens but a facsimile).
This suggests that the people who used anxiety as fuel for action by participating in the treatments and felt invested in it were likely to report improvement.
These approaches may work for Generalized Anxiety and could lower the prescriptions for medications. But it doesn’t work for those whose anxiety stems from insecure, preoccupied, and fearful attachment styles. Sebastian doesn’t have the same destabilizing anxiety when there is no connection with his attachment figure and unpredictability about its future.
Sebastian needs to work through his insecure attachment with a psychotherapist who will offer the reliable, consistent, and safe experience that he needs to rewire his brain and set a new template for what is known as earned secure attachment. It’s earned because it came through work with a stable attachment figure that had no other agenda, rather than in his infancy.
Individual therapy using a deep relational approach rather than a prescriptive, coaching strategy is what can move past the scar tissue aggravating the anxiety of insecure attachment, and make Sebastian feel safe again. He can trust in attachment figures to be there without intrusion or condition. That’s when he is rooted, moored, and grounded. If and when he gets anxious from time to time, he can then use the breathing techniques, the mindfulness spectrum of activities and his understanding of lack of control being non-threatening.
Copyright, Jeanette Raymond, Ph.D. 2024
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