Anxiety is a helpful and adaptive function of the brain that alerts us to danger or gives us pause at times when something may be threatening to our survival. This very function is in large part the reason for our survival as a species. After all, it is anxiety that activates our fight or flight response. Yet our brains can get cluttered

with confusing thoughts and danger signals that seem to lead us in unhelpful

directions. How could the thought of throwing up trigger the exact same

fight or flight response as seeing a mountain lion on a hiking trail?

The answer is complex and involves so many biological and

environmental factors that lead to a habitual brain and body

response. We could sum it up by saying that there is both helpful/adaptive

anxiety and unhelpful/exaggerated anxiety. So what's the solution?

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Avoidance is one answer some people would offer but the slippery

slope of avoidance just leads to more and more situations, people and

things that need to be avoided thus creating a small and restrictive world.

So if going away from the anxiety-provoking situation feeds the anxiety,

what else is available? A decent alternative is learning to be okay in the presence

of these triggers, which surprisingly leads to less and less false alarms in the brain.

And the pathway for getting to this sweet spot involves leaning into the

anxiety; gently and bravely going toward the fear with your thoughts and

actions. Cognitive behavior therapy and exposure therapy provide us with

an evidence-based framework for doing just this.