The worst anxiety is the anxiety of not wanting to feel anxious! But there's another side to it too — less visible, more insidious, a little beyond what our senses can pick up here and now: subconscious anxiety.
A person who is afraid of suffering is already suffering from that very fear. Subconscious anxiety feeds a person's fears, which is why they often deny its very existence in their life, reject it, internalise it, and suppress it within themselves for a long time.
Some people want to preserve a sense of pride, an image of omnipotence, of independence, the idea that they don't bend and they can endure anything.
Here, on the surface, ego may be speaking, but there's a hidden insecurity underneath. These people will rarely seek help, because they'd feel vulnerable, and they don't recognise when they're reaching their limits, ignoring the warning signs.
They tend to push themselves harder and harder each time to prove they can always manage, repeatedly setting themselves deadlines, as if sitting an exam every single day. An internal competition with the self.
Subconscious anxiety is anxiety whose source we don't understand. We feel anxious, or experience similar symptoms, even though everything in our life may seemingly be going well. We can't make sense of it.
This anxiety builds up progressively within us. It often originates in childhood. It accumulates, may be repressed consciously or unconsciously, flows within us, and as long as we don't touch it, don't understand it, that anxiety keeps growing and eventually surfaces through symptoms.
We often attribute this anxiety to external factors (e.g. it's the circumstances, it's other people, it's the job). These justifications, even when not deliberate, mistakenly stand in for the truth.
A person, however, cannot live for years with buried emotions — with underlying anger, disappointments, sadness, repressed feelings, guilt, unfulfilled desires — which is why, at some point, we feel something inside us waking up, a kind of uprising, as we experience in panic attacks, phobias, and depression.
The symptoms of subconscious anxiety can manifest in a variety of ways:
If you're experiencing similar symptoms without being able to explain them, first check whether they may be the result of a medical condition or a side effect of substances or medication.
Let's think back on situations or experiences where we were denied the right to be ourselves. When we wanted to do one thing but did another instead, one that now weighs on us, wears us down, and stands in the way of our happiness.
It might be the excessive pressure we've absorbed around the duty not to disappoint others, to protect them through self-sacrifice and concessions, regardless of what we ourselves actually want.
It might be low self-esteem — the sense that we're not worthy, not loved, not wanted by others — feeding a fear of abandonment, rejection and failure.
Many psychological difficulties signal a suppressed desire for pleasure and spontaneity. An anxious person has trapped themselves within internal prohibitions, specific "shoulds" and restrictions.
Whatever psychological state we're experiencing (depression, anxiety, panic attacks), it's best not to fall into the trap of believing we "must change".
The truth is that every time we face a mental health issue and decide to manage it, we do so in order to reconnect with our true self. With the hidden strength within us. To reconnect with every neglected part of ourselves.
If you feel you can't cope, that your anxiety has overwhelmed you, if you have persistent worries and fears affecting your daily functioning, don't hesitate to seek the help of a mental health professional.
It's time, then, not only to set the terms of the game yourself, but to enjoy it too.
Dimitra Zorzou