Top 7 causes of your anxiety

Besides my professional knowledge as a psychologist, I have my own experience of an anxiety disorder that I overcame - so I understand people in a similar state very well.

First, it is worth starting with the causes that lie on the surface - your physical health. Some conditions, autoimmune ones for example, can provoke an agitated, anxious state. So before "treating the mind", make sure there are no serious health issues - otherwise you may spend time on the psychological side when you simply needed to address your health.

Next come the psychological causes. As practice shows, it is most often these that trigger anxious states.

1. Inability to tolerate discomfort and negative emotions

If you interpret any discomfort as "something terrible", as something that should not be happening to you, and you suppress negative emotions or try not to feel them, you doom yourself to constant anxiety. Through your struggle and resistance you create excess tension in body and mind, and it seeks an outlet - hence the discharge in the form of panic attacks or intense anxiety.

What to do: learn to live through negative emotions - not suppress them but tolerate them, without resisting what is natural. Anxiety and other difficult emotions are part of life, and the more you don’t want to feel them, the harder they will "wash over" you.

2. The wish to be good for everyone

This one shows up in almost every client with an anxiety disorder. At some point in childhood we lacked love and unconsciously decided: if I am good, I will be loved. But trying to be good for everyone ultimately gives you neurosis and constant anxiety - you suppress your feelings, wishes and needs for the sake of others’ approval so heavily that you drive your psyche to exhaustion.

What to do: first, grieve the fact that you cannot please everyone, and live through those emotions. Then think about where and with whom you can meet your need for love and acceptance - whether you can build such relationships and give love in order to receive it. If this is hard, you can work on developing communication skills.

3. The wish to control everything

In essence it is the wish for guarantees in everything, the wish to foresee and predict it all. But life never gives any guarantees, and you cannot "break the system" of the universe. When we want to control everything, too many thoughts appear in our heads, provoking unnecessary actions, fuss and tension - and our resources are not limitless.

What to do: grieve this too - grieving helps you reach acceptance, and acceptance removes anxiety, because there is no struggle or needless action in it. The difficulty is tolerating the feeling of uncertainty - that is worth learning separately.

VK video: the skill of tolerating uncertainty → The same video on YouTube →

4. Fear of death

For many anxious people this lies on the surface - the fear that anxiety, panic attacks or illness will cause death. But behind this fear there is usually something bigger: "I am dissatisfied with my life as it is now but don’t know what to do about it", "I haven’t achieved something important and there seems little time left", or a huge sense of responsibility - "I cannot allow myself to die now, my loved ones won’t cope without me".

What to do: look more broadly. However old you are, you can move towards your goals. If something in your life doesn’t suit you, find the courage to admit it to yourself. Most often you fear not death but never truly starting to live.

5. Perfectionism

The wish to do everything "right" and "perfectly", with no right to make a mistake - and if a mistake happens, the person "eats" themselves up with particular cruelty. No one is perfect or does everything flawlessly the first time; if you are shown otherwise (on social media, say), there are usually motives behind it.

What to do: work out why it is so important to be perfect and what you feel when faced with your own imperfection - most likely it is a sense of "I am bad, not enough, vulnerable". Behind perfectionism there is often a lack of stable self-esteem: any failure has a devastating effect because there is no firm inner support. Here, working on self-esteem and on the ability to support yourself in any circumstances helps.

6. Things we refuse to allow

One of my teachers used to say: "We are ruled only by what we cannot allow." If you cannot allow that people might think badly of you, that negative emotions are part of life, that something might happen to your loved ones, that you might die - you doom yourself to constant worry, because these states will control you rather than you controlling them.

What to do: work with these refusals and try to see reality more broadly - it doesn’t obey our rules; it is we who need to adapt. Flexibility in thinking and behaviour is the key to a life without endless anxiety.

7. Psychological trauma

If at some point you experienced a difficult traumatic event and your psyche did not manage to process it, the brain will produce an acute reaction (usually strong fear) every time something reminds you of the trauma - this is how it tries to protect you from a repeat.

What to do: it is best to see a psychologist and work through the trauma separately - the specialist’s care matters here, because trauma work involves difficult, painful feelings.

You have probably noticed that it all runs much deeper than "just anxiety". But the main thing is that removing it is a perfectly solvable task. Work through each point separately and you will see results: the psyche always finds anything new difficult, so it is easiest to walk this path in therapy with a psychologist who will support you and highlight what seemed unclear.

Related videos

How I overcame my anxiety disorder → Video on emotional intelligence → How to live through anxiety the right way →