Written by: Romana Hrivnakova, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
We all have experienced anxiety at times. It's normal for us to feel anxious on occasion. But are you somebody who can't remember a time in your life when you did not feel anxious? Your body can never relax, and you find it difficult to soothe yourself. Your flight/fight response gets activated in situations where there is no real or imminent danger preventing you from functioning adequately in your daily life and connecting with people.
What could be the main cause of this overwhelming anxiety? Genetics? Stress? Challenging life experiences? What if this anxiety you have felt your whole life is caused by the insecure attachment you developed due to your parents' unpredictable behaviour and inconsistent care and attention? What if I told you that there is something you can do to repair your attachment injury, reduce your anxiety levels, improve the quality of your life and hand your children a better future that was handed to you?
Anxiety and Its Main Causes
Anxiety is a body response that alarms us to a potential threat or danger in our environment and activates the flight/fight response. We all experience anxiety differently, and various factors trigger our anxiety due to our unique life situations. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the following are the most common factors that may increase our risk of developing anxiety:
recent or past traumatic experiences
physical conditions (e.g., thyroid disorder, heart arrhythmia)
stress (e.g., stress at work, home, financial stress)
challenging life experiences (e.g., loss of a loved one, divorce)
some prescription medications can cause anxiety as a side effect
use of alcohol and illicit drugs (e.g., cocaine)
Other causes include:
some personality traits (e.g., shyness)
being alone or being with other people
low self-esteem
conflict
Anxiety Runs in Families
Some studies indicate the existence of a genetic component in the development of anxiety. However, none of them proved the existence of a single ‘anxiety gene’, and a study conducted in 2020 found that environmental rather than genetic factors are more likely to cause anxiety.
Thus, while scientists conduct more research to determine how important genetics are in developing anxiety, look around your family and ask who else suffers from anxiety. If you grew up with anxious parents, you are more prone to anxiety as your parents would have passed their anxiety on to you not just through their genes but mainly through their beliefs and behaviours.
Anxiety Has Its Roots in Early Attachment
Most of my clients who present with symptoms of anxiety have been feeling anxious their whole lives, and they live in a constant state of panic, fear, and worry. Exploring their childhood experiences, their parents' parenting style, and how parents responded to their distress and needs often indicate that their anxiety stems from their early attachment experiences. So, what is attachment?
Attachment is an emotional bond between children and their parents, and according to John Bowlby, the founder of attachment theory, we are born with an innate biological need to attach to our parents. Our attachment style is developed in early childhood based on our interactions with our parents. We can develop either a secure attachment style or one of the three types of insecure attachment style – anxious (preoccupied), avoidant (dismissive), or fearful (disorganized).
Our parents' ability to help us develop a sense of inner safety and security and how they teach us to regulate our emotions are the crucial factors that determine the development of secure or insecure attachment in our childhood. Our parents' inadequate response to our distress and their struggle to be present and consistent with their care leads to the development of insecure attachment that gets built into our nervous system.
“Anxiety is an attachment alarm. It is the desperate cry for help of some childhood part of you.” ‒ Gabor Mate
Gabor Mate, a renowned expert on addiction, trauma, and childhood development, believes that anxiety originates in our childhood experiences. If you grew up with parents with anxiety or other mental health challenges, you would be predisposed to anxiety. Not because anxiety is genetic but because your parents struggled to comfort you in distress. As a result, you started to feel anxious about surviving in an environment where your feelings of safety and security were not developed as you didn't receive comfort from your attachment figures.
Moreover, you might have begun to feel unloved, rejected or abandoned in childhood, and your view of yourself became very negative. You started to believe you were not worthy of love and support from others and suppressed your desire for close relationships that would provide safety, care and love. You became incredibly distrustful and suspicious of others. Your anxiety, if not relieved by your parents, became overwhelming, and you started to use ineffective coping strategies to try and help yourself; however, those strategies kept your anxiety elevated.
Your childhood experiences of being uncertain whether your parents would be available, responsive, or helpful in meeting your attachment needs and calming you in times of distress not only led to the possible development of separation and attachment anxiety but also led to you experiencing overwhelming anxiety in your explorations of the world. You started to feel anxious in every life situation. You never believed in yourself and your abilities, and everything increased your anxiety, from making a phone call to connecting with people to making decisions. And before you realized it, your anxious state became your natural way of being.
We choose what we know.
It is important to note that the relationship with your parents creates a template you take to all the other relationships in your life. All your relationships will fall into that template, and you become drawn to people who feel familiar. Thus, if you grew up with anxious parents or parents with insecure attachment, you are more likely to be drawn to people with insecure attachment style who equally would not be able to provide the comfort you need in times of distress, which consequently would keep you trapped in a cycle of never-ending anxiety and distress.
Help Yourself and Your Children
If you suffer from anxiety that stems from your insecure attachment style, your children are at higher risk of developing anxiety, not because of some genetic component, but because of how this type of attachment and your anxiety manifests in relationships. Thus, help your children (already born or planned) develop a secure attachment by seeking help to address your attachment issues. As Gabor Mate said, if you get the first 3 years of your children's lives right, you can relax; however if you won't, they will spend decades trying to repair the damage caused by your parenting.
Therefore, connect with a therapist and explore your childhood experiences and relationship with your parents that determine how you will raise your children and how attuned you will be to their attachment needs. Your feelings and behaviours towards your children are deeply influenced by your parents; thus, explore what you inherited and what was modeled to you by your parents. Understand what has led your parents to adopt their parenting style and educate yourself about multigenerational traumas and how they are passed on from generation to generation through behaviour and parenting.
Exploring this is not about blaming your parents. It's about increasing your self-awareness, becoming less anxious and breaking your family's cycle of anxiety.
“Family pathology rolls from generation to generation, taking down everything in its path like a fire in the woods until one person in one generation has the courage to turn and face the flames. That person brings peace to their ancestors and spares the children that follow.” ‒ Terry Real
So be courageous.
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Romana Hrivnakova, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Romana Hrivnakova works as a Psychotherapist in Toronto. Romana has extensive experience working with individuals who use substances to cope with childhood trauma, overwhelming emotions, or painful life experiences. In her 13 years of working as a mental health and addiction professional, she obtained various degrees and diplomas; however, she places her experience of working in a homeless shelter in the UK for 9 years above all her qualifications. There she witnessed the terrible consequences of childhood trauma, attachment injury, and people’s desperate attempts to cope with what happened to them (or did not happen and should have happened) in their childhood. This experience and her childhood challenges and life experiences inspired Romana to help her clients connect with their wounded inner children and help them react to present and future challenges as adults rather than wounded children.
