Anxiety and the instinct your stuck in.

Anxiety is an unpleasant feeling related to worry about the future. It is different from fear, which is more concrete. Anxiety is the paranoia of something out there that seems menacing but may not be menacing, and indeed might not even be out there. It very often relates to future uncertainties based on real or imagined events, based on early childhood uncertainties around decisions. Linking it to unresolved trauma that has piled up over time, which fuels the anxiety feeling within. 

Anxiety is surfacing to push you to change certain patterns and resolve unresolved problems. Anxiety can sometimes take the form of excessive worrying, feeling a sense of urgency and panic, and sometimes even around general activities in life. You may find yourself restless, or tense, having difficulty sleeping and or mind racing from one thought to another. You often worry about everyday things such as work, finances and family, even when you don't need to. You don't know when to relax and when it is valid to worry. People who experience anxiety often feel like failures. Your best was never good enough or pleasing enough as a child. Because you don't feel you can help yourself emotionally, this creates a sense of shame, helplessness, and the need to hide. In childhood, interruptions regularly affected your sense of peace. There was no sense of emotional structural stability in the early years of your life. This may result from an emotionally dysfunctional and traumatic family life in your younger years. You may well feel trapped in your current circumstances, linking it to the lack of freedom you currently feel. This may be connected to the feeling which repeated itself from a decision you wanted to make with your career/education in your younger life. 

You may behave in ways you think are pleasing to others, because of the fear of judgment, mistreatment, or punishment, you may pretend to be someone other than yourself, as criticism will be directed towards your facade rather than your vulnerable identity, making you feel safer.  You often misinterpret the way others communicate to you, reading too much into what others say. You may search for clues during conversations that validate how unworthy you feel. You may often experience this when you are already feeling overly sensitive because others have repeatedly criticised or judged you as a child. You are stuck in the fight or flight instinct, with many conflicting emotions in your heart, which leave you feeling confused about how to feel about things, leading the way to consult with others and not take your own counsel. The body is still responding to a threat. However, the threat has long gone, but the body may well remember.