How Anxiety Stems from Lack of Trust & Anger

When I work with clients with anxiety, I first ask them to share their story.

I recently had a  client I’ll call Jess. As a child Jess felt controlled and manipulated by her parents, which left her unwilling to trust others then.. and now. Because her parents simply did not know how to express their love, she always felt insecure, unsafe, and on-edge. Like so many of us, Jess became very angry at her parents and then buried that anger deep down, locking all the other emotions with it. 

Fast forward about 20 years and Jess is still living out the same scenario in her life. Anxiety plagues her. She finds herself craving to control her environment (something she could never do as a child), and as a result she finds it hard to ask for help, she finds uncertainty terrifying and as she struggles with trusting others (and deep down herself). She is often “stuck in her head” with overthinking (another attempt to control) and can’t let herself be fully seen for fear of rejection.  

What many people don’t see at first glance is that deep down, the “emotional anchor” that is keeping Jenny stuck in this cycle is actually Anger. While there are certainly many other emotions that she has buried away, anger is one of the most important ones because it often anchors the other hidden emotions. Many times people aren’t willing to let anger go because they never EVER want a past situation to happen again. They don’t want to feel hurt, manipulated, controlled, rejected like they did when they were young, so they become angry at the source, and make a secret vow to themselves that they will control every situation to make sure that those feelings don’t come up again.  

The irony? By holding onto your anger and not letting go of the past, it is 100% guaranteed that this same story will continue to play out in your life. You will live in constant fear and defensiveness against these emotions because you are always secretly keeping them at bay – hence the anxiety. 

So the first step I had Jess do was acknowledge where she felt really angry, who she was really angry at, and why she felt the need to hold onto it. This isn’t the easiest part of my job,  but it certainly is the most rewarding. It was as if Jess had opened the doors to a whole new way of seeing the world for the first time. 

After some committed digging, she was finally able to let decades of hidden moments of anger go. Many moments with her parents, and to her surprise many more with herself. It was like unraveling a ball of yarn, slowly at first.. then letting go became her new effortless way of being.  She let go of all the feelings she thought she had to bottle up. She let go of the need to control, she let go of the need to be perfect. She began to trust – first and foremost in herself- then in others. And guess what? The anxiety naturally dissipated. She changed her entire world fairly quickly just by being willing to do the work to finally let those buried emotions go and of course to finally forgive. It was such a beautiful thing to witness.

And it was all possible because she was willing to get real with herself, and be willing to address her “scariest” emotion and embrace it- so she could let go of the pain and anxiety that constantly resurfaced for her. 

Of course this did not happen overnight. Jess saw such profound results because she was willing to commit herself to work through a program I had designed for those who were looking to uncover the source of their anxiety and perfectionism. She decided that she had enough of the disconnected relationships, “difficulty” of life, and trying so hard to be perfect all the time. She trusted herself enough to ask for help. 

So, where can you reach out for help? Anxiety is not something you are, it is an way of coping that served you when you were younger but now it’s not serving you. There are much more joyful ways of being. You can let it go, all you have to do is be willing to open that door and make a leap of faith.

If you’d like to learn more about the program that worked wonders for Jess and many others like her, you can find out more about my Straight Talk about Anger program HERE.

Have more questions? Let’s connect and have a conversation. Feel free to connect with me via email at teresalea@intouchinlife.com or 336-623-9138.

Teresa