Anxiety: Do you need to know the cause?

I think this might be one of the most common problems that I see when I'm working as a therapist or as a coach with my clients. Uh, and that is the belief that if we don't know what is causing ourselves to feel anxiety or anger or depression or fill in the. that we can't fix it. And actually brings up another problem, which is the idea of fixing these things. Hey, I'm Justin Sunseri. I'm a therapist and coach.

I love to work with people to help them feel more calm, confident, and connected without psychobabble or woo woo. Welcome to Stuck Not Broken. This is of course not therapy or, nor is it intended to be therapy. Well, before I even go to this, this is, I'm gonna respond to a question I got from within my community. Basically I'll read it first and then go into it. The person says, "this is in regard to safety anchors."

I have a course called building safety anchors and a book called stuck now broken book two building safety. It talks all about both the course and the book talk all about how to feel safe, how to recognize it, how to do it again and build up the capacity to feel safe, um, day in, day out. "This is in regard to safety anchors. I'm not sure they will work for me. I don't know what's triggering my anxiety."

And then it gives me a year by year rundown of some of what he's been through and what he's attempted. And it sounds like he's definitely putting quote unquote, the work he's, he's done everything that one could ask of him to do. And then says, uh, "my biggest problem is I don't know what's creating this internal anxiety drive. If I don't know what it is, I can't fix it. It would seem that over the years I have created some safety spaces and recovered, but there is still some driving underneath.

I felt safe running safe at university and then safe at a specific area. They never lasted." So that's the context. So I want to respond to a couple of pieces of this. By the way, if you have a question for me, I love responding to questions. I also create episodes where I'm trying to figure out what would people be interested in learning about my community or my, uh, my audience. And then sharing about that. I'll keep doing those.

It was sort of like preplanned outlined episodes, but I really like this. I like to read from people and answer their questions. That's just more exciting for me, even though it might not be great for the Algorithm and channel growth, but this is I like doing this So if you have questions put them in the comments on YouTube email me if you like to. I can't promise I'll get to them, but I prefer to do this than just try to figure out what the heck you guys want to learn about.

The first piece of this is if we don't know what's causing the feeling can't we or can we not fix it? So on the one hand, like, yeah, of course, knowing what is

causing anxiety is super helpful. If you know that heights or spiders or a certain person or just going to work, if you know these things cause you anxiety, then yeah, it makes it a lot easier to set yourself up to potentially decrease the amount of anxiety, if not eliminate it. altogether. So if you know that you're afraid of spiders, well, you don't go around spiders and all of a sudden you don't have anxiety. That pretty much solves the problem, right?

Does it help you grow and face your fears and all that? No, not really, but it gets rid of the anxiety. So problem solved. If you know that you're anxious about going to work, like, I guess

you could just stop going to work. Sure. But maybe you could start to identify, identify more in particular what at work is causing you anxiety. Maybe it's not all the work. Maybe it's certain people at work. Maybe it's because your cubicle or is, um, or your office is too cramped and you need to declutter and that might help to reduce your anxiety.

Maybe you need to get up and walk in the middle of the day instead of being on TikTok or whatever social media platform during your 15, 30, 15 minute break. Maybe you need to get move around. So if we know the context, heck yeah, then it's a hell of a lot easier to address anxiety, or anger, or depression, or whatever the heck. But, at the same time, no, we don't need to know what's causing it for things to get better.

So, like, if, let's say that work is your anxiety trigger, well, I guess we already know it. But let's say you're going to work day in, day out, and you have no idea why you feel anxious. A lot of good can come from letting yourself feel anxious no matter the context. So if you give it permission to be there, if you just give yourself permission to have all of your feelings, no matter what they are, that actually helps, helps to reduce the intensity of the feeling.

So you can be at work without realizing that work is the trigger. So while you're at work, even though you're not aware that work is the trigger, you can still notice your feelings and then permit them to be there. And then listen to what your feelings need. And if you truly listen to what your feelings, what your body needs, it might tell you, get up and take a walk on our break. It might tell you, put the phone down, stare out the window and breathe mindfully.

But you have to first acknowledge that you have anxiety and then permit it to be there.

And then listen to what it needs. And if you listen deeply enough, it'll tell you what it needs. So you don't really need to know what's causing it, but your body will tell you that "here's the answer. This is what we need." And that can help to alleviate it. Well, the other issue with this question is, and actually the kind of like he said toward the end, which is some things help or some contexts help to reduce, or he's, he's, he used the word recover.

Some contexts helped me to recover, but it's still something still "driving underneath." And that's a really big issue. And probably what brings people to this channel or to the political theory in the first place is there's something else happening within me that I don't know how to cope with or turn off. And it's never that easy in the first place.

But it's not just like we go to a situation, we go to work, and then we're, well, okay, sometimes it is like we go to, we're around a spider and we get triggered into anxiety. But many people have underlying anxiety always present in their system, whether they're aware of it or not. But it's always there, at least at a low level, ready to be triggered. So it's just kind of lingering.

A lot of people have that issue and that would be due to their autonomic nervous system being stuck, probably in a state of sympathetic flight activation. So even though they're not getting up and running around, the body is prepared to run around. The body is prepared to escape. The body is already sympathetically driven, at least a little bit. So it's kind of always there. And then when we go to that certain environment, like work or around that certain person, now it becomes triggered.

It was already there. It was waiting. It was lying dormant. But now it's triggered by whatever and now we feel it. And now we think, well, what the heck's causing this? And that's a valid question. But also, it was already there. So it's not just the thing causing it. One may always be in a state of flight, fight, shut down, freeze. And so pinpointing a cause day to day is kind of a moot point.

And of course, it has a lot to do with past, the way we were raised, the things we've been through, culture, family, all the, everything, religious beliefs. All of these things contribute to whatever state that we are stuck in, for better or worse. And that's where the question of what's causing this really falls apart. Because it's not just a thing causing this. Now we're talking about being stuck in a state of defense potentially for a lifetime.

The other piece that I want to address here, and I don't think it's nitpicky I don't think it's me just finding a problem where it's not if you think so feel free to let me know in the YouTube comments or email me. This person and pretty much everybody I work with in therapy and as a coach pretty I mean, I can't think of anyone where this wasn't true They come to me and they want to fix how they feel. In no way do I blame them at all. And myself, I fall into this, um, thinking pattern as well.

So it's, no one's immune to this, but the reality is that our feelings or emotions don't need fixing. When I call the podcast Stuck Not broken, I really mean it. I don't think anyone here is broken. Broken. And anyone listening, myself, I don't think we're broken. I think that we might be stuck at some point, but not broken. If we're broken, we need fixing. If we're stuck, then, well, we just need to get unstuck. And to continue down our path in life. And that's a long road, potentially.

So, I don't think we need fixing. I don't think that our emotions, our thoughts, are here because we are broken in some way, or that we have some sort of illness. I I don't, I don't view things that way personally. So when people come to me in therapy or in coaching, they want to fix things. There's an obstacle there because well, you're not broken. And the way that you feel is damn near 100 percent of the time I've worked with people, a direct result of their life context.

Is someone born more or less likely to be anxious? Maybe I don't, I have no way of verifying that or proving that whatsoever. But every time I met with someone and they tell me what they're going through and I learn about their history. Yeah, it makes sense. It makes sense why somebody would be stuck in a state of flight, fight, shut down, or freeze. It makes sense why they would adopt whatever coping mechanisms they have to deal with that stuck state.

So what, how could we fix, it doesn't make sense to me how we could fix something that makes complete sense. It's not broken. You're not broken. Your stuck state is there for a reason. It's normal based on the context of your life. What's, I don't understand what's broken about that. I don't understand what needs fixing about that. And no, again, I don't think it's me nitpicking. I don't think it's me creating a problem where there is none. Maybe it is, but I don't think so.

So instead of that, if we can tweak the way we think about this, and I know people in my email lists are going to say, Justin, you don't like it when people focus on thoughts as the root of the problem, I, of course I agree. And I don't think it's the root of the problem, but if we can reframe about

that, we'll use a cognitive skill. We will reframe the need to be fixed with normalizing. With validating, normalizing, and even permitting how we feel, if we can put those cognitive skills into place, I think we're better off. Cause now all of a sudden our emotions are valid or we acknowledge them. They make sense based on the context of our life. That's the normalization piece. And we can permit them at step three, we can give them permission to be there.

And what I find time and time and time again, whether in my Client work one on one or in my live cohorts that I do in my community, when we can validate, normalize, and actually permit our feelings to be there instead of trying to fix them, they actually soften, they get quote unquote better. They don't go away completely.

They're not, it's not a cure, but when we go through that process, it significantly, time and time again, significantly reduces the intensity of what we're going through and it opens up some capacity to feel it, to feel, to go deeper into it, especially when combined with safety. Passive and mindfully grounding in our safety state. So it's I, I fixing and making things better. I get the sentiment. I don't blame anybody at all. We've all been there.

Again, no one's immune to this, but if we can do a reframe here. So instead of fixing, it's actually, I'm just stuck. And if you're into this polyvagal stuff, like I am that stuck message should really resonate with you. So I would invite you to take that seriously. I would invite you to, to reframe that. And if you can do that now, all of a sudden, can you validate how you feel? Just acknowledge it. Can you normalize how you feel based on the context of your life?

And then can you give permission to how you feel? And if you can do that, especially when combined with safety, all of a sudden now you have a potential to listen to your body, to feel deeply what you're going through and then to act on those underlying sensations and impulses that come along with your stuck defensive state. This is very top level, high level understanding of it.

Way more involved, um, the process of validating, normalizing, and permitting the process of feeling into your stuck defensive state. There's a lot of pieces that I can't go over here, but that's the, that's the broad overview of it. I guess the, at a minimum, if you could take something away from this is you're not, you're not broken.

You are stuck like all of us on some level where we have some level of stuckness. You're stuck with the potential to get unstuck, not broken and desperate for fixing. Take that out- hopefully you take that reframe. And the other piece of this is that knowing the why of something can be really helpful. Is it necessary? No, not really. And even when I work with my clients one on one, they always say, I don't know why. I don't know why I feel this way. I don't know why. We always figure it out.

But, um, They say, I don't know why. And I'll tell them, we don't need to know why. We just need to know what you feel in the present moment. And that's, we got lots to work with right there. As we feel things in the present moment, the why of it becomes a lot more clear. Memories will start to come up, feelings, old feelings.

Those things start to come up, but in the present moment, if we can get to just what you feel without making it go away, trying to make it go away, without judging it, without minimizing it, if we can get to how you feel in the present moment, there's so much there to work with. The why of it is still important, but it's not necessary. Alright, that's it. Thank you to this person for messaging this and letting me use it as a little prompt to create an episode around.

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