The Harrowing Relationship Between Anxiety and Trauma and How to Manage It

The mental health epidemic is one of the largest health concerns we are facing as a society at the moment. From early adolescents to elders, mental illnesses seem to have a hold on people of all ages and professions. The most common mental disorders to have paralyzed people around the globe are anxiety and depressive disorders.

As a result, suicide has been reported as the fourth leading cause of death among people in the 15-29 age group. According to the latest report on mental illnesses by the WHO (World Health Organization), people who suffer from mental disorders end up dying an untimely death.

The WHO's estimate also states that 1 in every 8 people in the world lives with a mental disorder.

What is Anxiety?

Anxiety can be defined as a state of mind governed by excessive worry. What separates anxiety disorders from phobias is that there is no perceivable reason for being anxious. The person suffering can't identify the trigger, and perhaps that is the most debilitating part of living with an anxiety disorder.

In 2019, a total of 301 million were living with an anxiety disorder. There are different types of anxiety disorders. They are - Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), panic disorder (defined by recurring panic attacks), social anxiety disorder (fear of social situations), separation anxiety disorder (referred to as a seemingly endless fear of being separated from someone), etc.

While the term anxiety encompasses a wide variety of symptoms and complications for the people living with them, our focus today is going to be on trauma and the correlation between the two.

What is Trauma?

Trauma can be described as the mental impression caused by a particularly difficult experience in someone's life. While all types of incidents that induce fear and anxiety can cause trauma, some of the most common forces behind this condition are sexual abuse, domestic abuse, childhood abuse, and emotional and physical abuse.

For a long time, a common misconception stated that only soldiers returning from the war were susceptible to developing trauma responses, or PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). But, as time passed, researchers found that PTSD can be caused by any stressful situation depending on the patient's capacity to deal with the said crisis.

Why do people who have experienced trauma deal with anxiety?

People who have undergone some form of trauma in their life will go on to experience anxiety. Why? Well, the simple definition of a traumatic incident is that someone had to face a situation that was out of bounds for them.

When people end up facing a similar condition later, their brain goes through exactly what it went through when the traumatic incident had first taken place. That said, each and every characteristic of the incident does not have to be replicated.

Anxiety gets triggered by familiar features of the previous setting, like sound, smell, light, etc. When someone comes face to face with the characteristics of a particularly traumatic incident that had caused them suffering and pain, anxiety becomes almost instinctive.

Before the person realizes it, they would either be experiencing physical or mental manifestations of anxiety. Anxiety shows up physically in the form of body pain, headaches, sweating, inability to speak or move, etc. The mental expression of anxiety comes out in responses like shock, fear, panic, etc.

How can you manage Trauma and Anxiety in therapy?

The discipline of psychology has always treated therapy as an effective method of dealing with serious mental disorders. However, there are different types of therapy – for example, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Interpersonal Psychotherapy, Psychodynamic Therapy, etc.

In therapy, people suffering from PTSD and anxiety as a result of it, are taught breathing exercises to help them navigate their way through a panic attack or an anxiety attack. This is a helpful tool for people to use when they are caught in a bind.

A common therapy practice is to teach patients how to count five things they can see, four things they can physically feel, three things they can hear, two things they can smell, and one thing they can taste. This is essentially a grounding exercise. It makes individuals more aware of what's happening in their surroundings instead of getting stuck in their anxiety-ridden thought processes.

Then there's exposure therapy. The point of exposure therapy is to place individuals in an anxiety-inducing environment and let them stay there for as long as they can. The premise here is to make them realize that they are strong enough to deal with the situation if they face their fear completely.

However, this specific practice comes with the assurance that the therapist will take the individual out of the said environment whenever it gets too much for them. This instills in them the belief that they can always get out and that their fear is unwarranted, but it does not give them a tangible tool to get through the mental pain they are feeling.

Somatic Healing

One of the most effective ways of managing trauma and anxiety is by practicing somatic therapy. The principles of somatic therapy dictate that trauma messes with the individual's nervous system, which eventually renders them incapable of dealing with the pain and fear they are experiencing.

Somatic healing takes place when the individual is made aware of the changes their mental illness is making to their physical extremities. Somatic therapists believe this awareness allows them to view their pain objectively and find a way out of it.

Some common practices performed for somatic healing to take place are:

● Breathing Exercise

● Grounding Exercise

● Dance therapy

● Physical Exercise

● Sensation awareness

● Massage

Top Anxiety Treatments

The nature of anxiety is such that the individual can't figure out what worries them. However, therapy practitioners believe that anxious thoughts and feelings can be worked through by getting to the root cause of them.

While this seems like a good hypothesis, it involves recalling even more traumatic incidents in the individual's life. Once someone becomes aware of the root cause of their anxiety, there are two ways to go - one, where they resolve the conflict in them by facing the truth of what happened. This works for most people.

The second way to go, sadly, further descends into a mental space where the intensity of their fear increases. Slowly, the individual develops more and more trauma responses that go back to incidents as far as their childhood.

This is the point where their trauma responses become a part of their identity. It's known as Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD). It's also referred to as the counterpart of one of the most debilitating personality disorders, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

Marsha M. Linehan, a world-renowned psychologist, founded Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) specifically to treat Borderline Personality Disorder. DBT proved to be an effective treatment plan for people with suicidal ideation, PTSD, anxiety, etc.

DBT is one of the top anxiety treatments out there. It's essential to find a DBT practitioner certified in this specific form of therapy.

Furthermore, one can turn to pharmacotherapy. This is defined as the use of antidepressants like SSRIs and SNRIs, and benzodiazepines to treat the symptoms of anxiety.

Ideally, psychotherapy (DBT) and pharmacology should go hand in hand. The individual should take their medication as prescribed on time and attend regular therapy sessions.

In short, anxiety and trauma are correlated in the way they affect people. This is because they both induce a similar response in the individual - fear. But, they can be dealt with. If you are in a bad headspace, we hope you use the information above to seek professional help.  Please contact 911 or head to the nearest emergency room if you are having thoughts of suicide or harm.