51. Systemically Reducing Anxiety: Protective Factors

During the anxiety support group I led at church, one of the members said, “We’ve been talking so much about the negative. Is there anything positive in all of this?” Well, I’m glad you asked! There is absolutely a positive side in talking about coping with anxiety. In fact, the more positive factors we can include in our lives, the less anxious we are likely to be. Let’s get started!

Protective factors, as the name implies, are things that help protect us from anxiety and depression and help us systemically create lives that best serve us. Some protective factors, unfortunately, are out of our control. Genetics, for example: if you are predisposed to struggle with addiction, being overweight, certain diseases, etc., you will have to work harder than others at maintaining certain levels of health. Childhood traumas and family of origin is another factor that’s out of our control; we can’t choose our families and we have no control over the circumstances we grow up in. Our childhood experiences, unfortunately, tend to have long-lasting effects on us no matter how our adult lives shape up. But as we know, there is plenty we can do to help us identify how our childhood experiences affect us and may be keeping us stuck in ingrained beliefs and patterns. Please return to the previous few posts, “Anxious Thoughts Debunked” and “Anxiety and the Body” for insights on this, and please consider seeking out a trauma-informed therapist if you have childhood issues you’d like to work through.

Here are protective factors that we CAN have control over:

• Social support

• Physical health

• Sense of purpose

• Self-esteem

• Coping skills and healthy thinking

Social Support

Social support is the sense of having people in your life who genuinely care for you and are willing to help you with your needs. If you struggle with asking for help, you’re not alone. If you struggle to accept help even when it’s offered to you, you’re not alone. If you struggle to feel like you have people in your life you can be fully honest about your struggles with, you’re not alone. And if you struggle to feel like you have anyone in your life who actually gives a shit about you and not just about themselves, you’re not alone.

There are different types of social support. There’s physical support - people who will bring you meals when you have surgery or bring a new family member home, people who will babysit, help you move, help you with a home project, give you a ride or make a grocery run. There’s emotional support - people who give a listening and empathic ear when you need to talk and don’t seem afraid of your emotions. There’s common interest support, like workout groups, Bible studies, book clubs. There’s proximity support of people you see regularly because of the stage of life you’re in, like co-workers, families with kids the same ages as yours, classmates, neighbors.

Having realistic expectations about the type of support you’re likely to get from someone is key. Maybe your parents are readily available to babysit or help you fix a leaking sink, but are not great to talk to about deeper issues. Maybe you have a great time hanging out with your co-workers at happy hour, but you know it’s okay if you drift apart as your lives move in different directions. Maybe you have a friend you can talk to about deep emotional issues, but they’re not a friend you’d bring with you on a spontaneous weekend road trip. The important thing is whether or not you feel like you are getting what you need out of your social support networks, and to seek out additional supports if essential pieces are missing. And to know that different people bring different strengths, and that’s okay.

Physical Health

We know that we can’t control our genes. But we can control whether or not we have regular preventive care visits, whether we take proper care of our bodies through nutrition, hydration, exercise, sleep, and hygiene, whether we limit alcohol intake, whether we take our medications as prescribed, and whether we take appropriate steps when we find out we may be predisposed to a particular medical issue. We need to recognize the detrimental nature that excessive stress can have on the body and take care of ourselves.

For example, when the fight-flight-freeze-fawn system is activated, the body knows it needs to provide resources to the parts essential for survival. It will provide blood to the heart and muscles so you can fight for your life or get away from the situation. This is meant to be a temporary survival means. But when your nervous system is chronically activated - i.e., you are chronically stressed - the body will chronically provide resources to those essential parts, and not to others. Over time, your other body parts will wear down as they continue to not get the resources they need. This can lead to health issues such as high blood pressure, autoimmune issues, diabetes, gastrointestinal issues, asthma, even certain cancers. If you struggle to say no, take on more than you can/should handle, struggle to cut back, struggle to ask for help - please see this as permission to do those things, because it is for the benefit of your physical health as well as your mental health!

Sense of Purpose

Sense of purpose is the feeling that you and your life matter. Sometimes you gain a sense of purpose through your job, sometimes through being present for your family, sometimes through your friendships, volunteer work, or extracurriculars. You have the ability to know whether or not you are getting the sense of purpose you need. It doesn’t have to look one way or another to benefit your mental health. You may work a day job you aren’t passionate about, but it pays the bills and allows you to be present with your family. However, if you feel miserable in your day job, you don’t have to justify it by saying “but it pays the bills and I get to see my family” if you don’t genuinely feel that sense of satisfaction. If you don’t financially have to stay at a job you’re miserable at, you don’t have to force yourself to. Same thing if you stay home with your kids. You may enjoy it for the most part, but feel like you could really benefit from paying a babysitter one or two days a week so you can get other things done or just take some time for yourself. The key is listening to what you need, not to what you feel you “should” do or what you think others are doing.

This can pose a significant challenge for people throughout shifting stages of life, particularly becoming a parent, becoming an empty nester, or retiring. If you have recently gone through or are approaching one of those stages, please know that your feelings and questions are normal. Please have patience with the transition process, surround yourself with supportive people, maintain as much “normalcy” as possible in your routines as you adjust, and considering talking to a therapist for extra, unbiased support.

Self-Esteem and Sense of Identity

Sense of identity is knowing who you are as a human being, and self-esteem is liking and accepting that person. This allows you to meet yourself with grace throughout challenges and know you are doing the best you can. It allows you to accept and forgive yourself when you make mistakes and know you are just a human trying your best. You can strengthen your sense of identity through journaling, self-reflection, having conversations with close friends and partners, and just noticing what brings you joy and makes you feel alive (and what doesn’t). Anxiety and depression often come when a person struggles with self-defeating, self-critical thinking, so the more you love and accept yourself, the greater your resilience will be in the face of challenges.

(By the way, if you’re thinking, “But I can’t love and accept myself too much; I don’t want to be a narcissist” - know that narcissism usually manifests when a person actually feels deeply insecure, not overly self-loving. The overt self-importance that often appears with narcissism comes from a place of deep insecurity and the need to overcompensate. So, the more genuine your love for yourself is, the more genuine love you will have to give for others, not the other way around. Love multiplies. It doesn’t have a limit.)

Here’s a great video on self-compassion by Dr. Kristin Neff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvtZBUSplr4

Coping Skills and Healthy Thinking

Coping skills is the ability to manage emotions in a helpful way, not get stuck and overpowered by them. It is the ability to tolerate uncomfortable or distrressing emotions. Healthy thinking is the ability to recognize the impact of emotions on one’s thoughts and actions. It is the ability to recognize mistakes without being consumed by and ruminating on them. And it is the ability to have perspective on situations both inside and outside of our control.

Sometimes, you can gain the ability for healthy thinking on your own. And sometimes, you may need help. I recently started taking a medication after I’d spent years getting consumed by self-critical thoughts, ruminating on my mistakes, and worrying about situations outside of my control. I’d think, “I’m a therapist, I shouldn’t need medication. I know how to restructure my thoughts.” But they were so deeply ingrained that it took so. much. work. I was constantly having to work so hard just to feel a sense of joy and contentment, and when I actually did feel joy and contentment, I still felt anxious because to feel content felt wrong and dangerous. I tried so hard to fix it on my own (and in therapy), but I just needed some help getting over that final hurdle. I am so, so, so glad I’ve started taking medication because I can finally enjoy my life. It’s not such a burden, day after day after day. I don’t plan to be on medication forever, but what the medication is doing (along with continued therapy, journaling, and self-reflection) is helping my brain un-learn those deeply ingrained, self-critical neural pathways and replace them with healthier ones. So, there’s no shame in getting help. It’s helped me live my life with so much more freedom and ease. And I don’t feel like a robot, either - I still experience sadness and worry and overwhelmedness - but those feelings are much less all-consuming, and I can sit with them without being drowned by them.

Finally, some notes on systemically reducing anxiety:

• Practice gratitude. There’s a great Tedx Talk by Alison Ledgerwood about how reflecting for a few minutes a day on what you are grateful for can drastically increase your ability for a positive outlook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XFLTDQ4JMk

• Spend time with people who build you up and pour into you, and limit your time with people who don’t. The book Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend is a great resource for this.

• Create small, daily habits of pouring into yourself. Maybe that’s spending 15 minutes in the morning journaling, or taking a walk after dinner, or spending a few minutes before going to bed to just be still and breathe. Maybe it’s setting up regular times to go for walks or check in with friends. Maybe it’s trying something new that you’ve always wanted to try, or finally letting go of that thing you’ve been meaning to let go of for years. The book Atomic Habits by James Clear is a great one for building small victories into your daily life.

• Notice if there’s anything you just keep getting stuck on. This would be a great opportunity to see a therapist to get that little bit of extra help getting you unstuck.

Thank you for reading this series. I am very passionate about helping people get unstuck and get on a path to richer, fuller living. If you need help finding a good therapist, I wrote a blog series on this several months ago - go to the main “Blog” page and scroll to page 1. Good luck, and please let me know if you have any additional questions or topics I can address!