Anxiety's Secret Self Defence Mechanism

You've taken the meds. You've done the therapy. You've even tried your friend Jane's suggestion of "just don't worry about it" and somehow that didn't stop your worrying, either.

The question is: "why won't anxiety go away?"

If you have ever felt like you are playing a game of chess with your worrying, trying to outmanoeuvre it while it tries to outmanoeuvre you, you're not alone. And there is a good reason to feel this way: as a metaphor, it is quite an accurate description of what is going on.

A Thought Virus

Think of anxiety as a thought virus.

Whether a virus, such as the common cold, is alive is up for debate in the scientific community. But it certainly is not conscious. There are no thoughts going through the head of the common cold.

And yet, it is like it acts intelligently. It uses up your body's resources, making you feel run down while leaving you enough energy to still struggle out to work, to the shops, to university, etc., so that you can spread it around.

Then it causes you to cough, sneeze, and drip copies of the virus onto as many surfaces as possible, ready to be picked up by someone else.

It's an icky process, but one that works incredibly well for the common cold.

Anxiety Acts Intelligently, Too

Anxiety isn't a physical virus. It is a pattern of interconnections between brain cells: a formation of knowledge that lives inside your head.

But, like the common cold, it displays signs of intelligent behaviour, too. It defends itself against attack. It wants to live on and reacts aggressively to your attempts to get rid of it.

In anxiety's case, it's the paralysing fear and self-doubt that encourages you not to seek out treatment.

How We All Feel

Are any of the following thoughts familiar?

• "There is no point trying treatment; it won't work"
• "I've tried treatment before, and it didn't work, so it won't work this time"
• "It's too hard; I can't do it"
• "I've been going to therapy for two months now, and I can't see any improvement. This is pointless."
• "I'll never get rid of my anxiety"
• "I'm too tired and stressed out to look at treatment options at the moment"
• "I'll do it later when I have more time and feel better"
• "I'm just not in a good place right now"

If so, you're not alone.

All of these thought patterns are very common with both anxiety and depression.

They convince us that it is not worth trying to eliminate our anxiety because we feel we are not strong enough and that any effort we spend on trying to do so would be wasted.

But this is not us talking. It is our anxiety. It is using its secret self-defence mechanism known as "metacognitions" to protect itself.

Metacognitions

A cognition is a thought. A metacognition is a belief about a thought. It is what we think about thinking. Let's take a moment to reflect on that, as it can take a bit of time to get your head around it.

We're not just talking about our beliefs here. We are talking about our beliefs about beliefs.

In this case, we are not talking about our anxious thoughts, but rather what we believe about our anxious thoughts. And this is the self-defence mechanism. Because anxiety warps out metacognitions.

It gives us beliefs such as:

• "I cannot change my anxious thinking"
• "There is no point trying to change my thinking"
• "I need to worry to keep myself safe"

These beliefs profoundly affect the way we think about our anxiety. However, we may not experience them consciously. They may be bubbling away below the surface without us even noticing them.

What is the result?

The problem with having such metacognitions is that they affect the way we interact with our anxiety.

If fundamentally we believe that we cannot change, that we cannot get rid of our anxious thinking, we are unlikely to find the motivation to attend and stick with treatment.

This is the secret power of anxiety: it subconsciously convinces us that there is no point trying to change because there is nothing we can do to get rid of it.

We may even feel that we need to continue to worry because our personal safety is at stake.

What do we do about it?

When tackling our anxious thoughts, we challenge whether they are really true. We test them against reality and find that they are not substantiated.

We can do the same thing with our metacognitions.

For example, the idea that you cannot change. Does that seem true? Are you the same person you were five years ago?

This is one of the reasons that activities such as lifelong learning is important. Learning a new skill is one of the ways you can prove to yourself that you can change, and therefore that the idea that you can never change your anxious thoughts is incorrect.

Let's consider an example by looking at a fictional scenario between Sarah and her therapist.

Therapist: What has been making you anxious recently?Sarah: I'm really worried about my holiday next week.Therapist. OK. What thoughts are you having?Sarah: That I have forgotten something.Therapist: Why do you think you have these worries?Sarah: Well, it's important. If we do forget something like passports, car hire, travel insurance, it could ruin the holiday.Therapist: So, you think worrying about it is important?Sarah: Yes.Therapist: Has it helped you remember anything?Sarah: I guess not. I'm just having the same worries over and over again.Therapist: Sounds like it isn't helping, then.Sarah: I guess not.

In this scenario, we uncover the metacognition that keeps the worry going. It's not that the worry isn't valid, it is that the reasons for worrying are not valid.

Summary

Anxiety has a secret self-defence mechanism: it makes us think we need it to stay safe.

To overcome our anxiety, we need to challenge this idea. Just like we challenge our worries to see if there are valid or not, we can challenge our beliefs about worry to test their validity, too.