What Anxiety Is Actually Trying to Do

By Jonathan Hers, RCC

There’s a version of this story I’ve heard more times than I can count.

Someone grows up in a home where love feels conditional and criticism is constant. Not abuse in the way people usually define it — no bruises, no obvious trauma they can easily point to. Just a parent whose approval always felt slightly out of reach. A childhood spent learning to read the room, manage other people’s emotions, and stay small enough not to become the problem.

Now they’re in their thirties or forties. Functioning well by most measures. Successful career. Relationships. Responsibilities handled.

And yet there’s still a hum underneath everything.

A vigilance that never fully powers down. A body that moves through the world like something bad is about to happen. A nervous system that struggles to relax, even in moments that are objectively safe.

Eventually they say something like this:

“I don’t understand why I feel this anxious. I have no reason to be.”

That sentence is usually where the real work begins.

Why Do I Feel Anxious for No Reason?

One of the most important things I tell clients is this:

Anxiety is not a malfunction.

It’s not evidence that something is wrong with you. Anxiety is your nervous system trying to protect you.

Your brain and body are built for survival. Long before we had language or conscious reasoning, the nervous system evolved to scan for danger and respond quickly:

• Heart rate increases
• Muscles tense
• Attention narrows
• The body prepares to fight, flee, or freeze

From an evolutionary perspective, anxiety is incredibly intelligent. If there were a tiger nearby, you’d want your nervous system reacting instantly — not calmly debating whether the threat was real.

The problem is that many modern nervous systems still react as though danger is present, even when the “threat” is emotional rather than physical.

Can Childhood Experiences Cause Anxiety in Adulthood?

Very often, yes.

The nervous system doesn’t always distinguish between physical danger and emotional danger. A difficult conversation, rejection, criticism, conflict, or abandonment can activate the same survival responses that physical threats do.

This is one reason early relational experiences matter so deeply.

If someone grows up in an environment where they constantly had to monitor moods, avoid criticism, suppress emotions, or stay hyperaware of other people’s reactions, their body may learn that the world is fundamentally unsafe.

Even years later, that conditioning can remain active beneath conscious awareness.

Psychiatrist and trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk famously wrote that “the body keeps the score.” The experiences we couldn’t fully process don’t simply disappear. They can live on in the body through chronic tension, shallow breathing, hypervigilance, emotional shutdown, or persistent anxiety.

So when someone says, “I have no reason to feel anxious,” I usually become curious about what their nervous system learned long before today.

What Is Your Nervous System Actually Doing During Anxiety?

According to polyvagal theory, developed by Stephen Porges, the nervous system is constantly scanning for cues of safety or danger — often outside conscious awareness.

This process, called neuroception, happens automatically.

When the nervous system detects danger — whether real, remembered, or anticipated — it shifts into survival states:

• Fight
• Flight
• Freeze
• Shutdown

The anxious person is not “overreacting.” Their nervous system is responding exactly the way it learned to respond based on past experiences.

Somatic therapist Peter Levine expanded on this through Somatic Experiencing, which suggests that survival energy can remain stuck in the body when stress responses are never fully completed.

We brace, but never exhale.

We tense, but never release.

We stay prepared for danger long after the danger has passed.

This is often the underlying feeling people describe as:

• “always on edge”
• “unable to relax”
• “waiting for something bad to happen”
• “never fully safe”

Why Does Anxiety Feel Physical?

Because anxiety is physical.

While anxiety often includes racing thoughts, it begins in the nervous system and body. Many people experience anxiety through symptoms like:

• Tight chest
• Shallow breathing
• Jaw tension
• Digestive issues
• Difficulty sleeping
• Restlessness
• Muscle tension
• Feeling constantly “on alert”

These symptoms are not imagined. They are physiological survival responses.

This is also why insight alone doesn’t always resolve anxiety. You can logically know you’re safe while your body still feels unsafe.

Therapy approaches that include the body — including EMDR, somatic therapy, and nervous system regulation work — can help address anxiety at a deeper level than cognition alone.

How Does EMDR Help Anxiety and Trauma?

In EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), we often work with memories, beliefs, and emotional experiences where survival responses became stuck.

These experiences may leave behind unconscious beliefs such as:

• “I’m not safe.”
• “I’m not enough.”
• “Something bad is about to happen.”
• “I have to stay hypervigilant.”

EMDR doesn’t erase memories. Instead, it helps the nervous system reprocess them so they no longer carry the same emotional charge.

As this happens, people often notice:

• less reactivity
• reduced physical anxiety
• improved emotional regulation
• greater ease in relationships
• a deeper sense of internal safety

What’s Underneath Anxiety?

In my experience, anxiety is often protecting something more vulnerable underneath.

Sometimes it’s grief.

Sometimes anger.

Sometimes fear, loneliness, shame, or hurt that never had space to fully move through.

Psychotherapist Hilary Jacobs Hendel describes anxiety as something that often sits on top of core emotions, helping us avoid feelings that once felt overwhelming or unsafe to experience.

In that sense, anxiety is not the enemy.

It’s a protector.

And part of therapy involves helping the nervous system slowly learn that it may not need to work quite so hard anymore.

How Do You Calm an Overactive Nervous System?

Many people try to fight anxiety, suppress it, or reason their way out of it.

But often the more effective approach is curiosity rather than combat.

Instead of:

• “How do I get rid of this?”
  we begin asking:
• “What is this trying to protect?”
• “What does my body believe is unsafe?”
• “When did I first learn to brace like this?”

These questions can open important doors.

Because underneath anxiety there is often something deeply human that has been waiting a very long time to be understood.

Therapy for Anxiety Isn’t About “Fixing” You

One of the most important things I want clients to understand is this:

You are not broken.

Your nervous system adapted to the experiences it lived through.

Therapy is not about eliminating emotion or becoming perfectly calm all the time. It’s about helping your body experience enough safety, support, and connection that it no longer has to stay in survival mode constantly.

That process takes time.

But it’s possible.

And you do not have to have everything figured out before you begin.

Sometimes the first step is simply becoming curious about what your anxiety may have been trying to say all along.

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Jonathan Hers is a Registered Clinical Counsellor working at Local Health Integrative Clinic. Learn more about Jonathan by clicking here, or book a free meet-and-greet to explore the potential of him supporting you by clicking here.

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References:

References

[1] Schwartz, R. C. (2021). No bad parts: Healing trauma and restoring wholeness with the Internal Family Systems model. Sounds True.

[2] Van der Kolk, B. A. (2015). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Penguin Books.

[3] Maté, G. (2019). When the body says no: The cost of hidden stress. Vintage Canada.

[4] Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

[5] Levine, P. A. (2010). In an unspoken voice: How the body releases trauma and restores goodness. North Atlantic Books.

[6] Shapiro, F. (2018). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy: Basic principles, protocols, and procedures (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

[7] Hendel, H. J. (2018). It’s not always depression: Working the change triangle to listen to the body, discover core emotions, and connect to your authentic self. Random House.