You would think that a person crippled by anxiety, panic and fear would be the LAST person you’d want involved during a real emergency. Wouldn’t an anxious person crumble and be useless if the chips are really down?
Oddly, the exact opposite tends to be true!
Many anxious people in our community regularly tell stories of actual real-life emergencies and urgent situations in which they perform capably and without fear or panic. They never see that coming, and they are almost universally shocked and amazed at how well they did once they get a chance to look back on the event. It’s amazing, really.
Why is this such a common situation? Why do we hear these stories so often?
The anxiety you struggle with - and the thoughts and sensations that come with it - are all INTERNAL events. Your threat detection and response system is firing in response to no identifiable threat in the environment. You search for the danger, but none exists, so YOU become the danger. Your own body and mind become the danger. You get dragged around by normal, predicable bodily sensations and the thoughts that pop up around them. It seems uncontrollable and makes you feel completely incapable of handling anything.
But what happens when your threat detection and response system is triggered by a real event happening outside your head that you can easily identify? What happens when the threat is well known and the response is fairly well defined and within the scope of your behavioral repertoire?
If your child falls off their bike and sprains an ankle, this is clearly defined event that requires a well known response that you are familiar with and able to execute. There’s no mystery and no ambiguity there. Panic be dammed, you scoop up your child and head to the hospital for x-rays, a cast, or whatever else is needed. You remain occupied with THEM and with the doctors and nurses taking care of them. Your body responds as designed, and your capable mind processes input and makes decisions accordingly.
Your usual anxiety, fear, and panic, do not enter into it for the most part. Afterward, you find yourself amazed, feeling pretty good about yourself, and also wondering why you can’t just do that all the time!
These experiences shine a bright light on some of the core principles of recovery. They teach us all the things our bodies and minds do when threatened are OK, and even useful in the right circumstances. They really bring the “proper response at the wrong time” concept into full view.
When this happens, take the lesson. I’m hoping you won’t have to make any emergency trips to hospitals in the near future of course, but if you are confronted with an emergency that play out this way, or if you have in the past, reflect on it as the ultimate proof of the irrational, baseless nature of fear that FEELS so real, but is built on … nothing.
Anxious people are often rockstars in times of urgency or emergency. But that means they’re rockstars all the time, even when they refuse to recognize that.
Have you listened to this week’s episode of The Anxious Truth podcast? Check it out out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or my website and YouTube channel.
69 Anxiety vs. Real Emergencies