Anxiety Series (Part 3): The Root Cause of Anxiety

Traci Moreno, PsyD
May 9
4 min read

We all experience symptoms of anxiety on one level or another. Even if we don’t have diagnosable anxiety, we can still experience symptoms of anxiety when we’re dealing with something difficult or stressful in life. Let’s try and figure out what may have initially triggered this fight, flight or freeze response.

This is a guided exercise.

You'll need pen and paper to follow along

so that you can apply these teachings to your own life.

Think about when the symptoms first started. This could go as far back as childhood. It doesn’t have to be a traumatic event. It’s more about how the situation affected us and possibly changed us. We’re not here to judge whether the event was bad enough especially if you were a child when it happened. As a child we are more sensitive to life events and change so any type of instability could be considered traumatic for a child.

Exercise Questions:

Write down when the anxiety first started. It can be your approximate age or time period like childhood, teens, 20's, etc... Think about your life around that time and what was happening. Were there any changes in your life? Remember, if anxiety is fear of the unknown, any change can cause anxiety, even good changes- going on a first date, moving, getting married, having a baby, starting a new job or trying something new. Make some notes on what you can remember happening around that time.

This event could’ve set the stage for future responses to stressful events, which means you’ll need to heal from it, because every time you experience something stressful currently it could be triggering this event, as well as, all the other stressful events that have happened in your life.

For example, we can become anxious and fearful when someone yells at us or even when we witness other people yelling at each other. We may not realize that the fear we’re feeling in that moment comes from a much deeper place within us. It could be from a parent yelling at us as a child, witnessing domestic violence or being involved in it as an adult. This is the core pain that could be triggering our current anxiety. This is what we need to heal from.

If you’re not able to identify any possible changes or challenges, the problem may be due to someone close to you (like a parent or primary caregiver) modeling that behavior for you and you end up copying or modeling it. This is often unconscious.

Exercise Questions:

Was there anyone in your life with anxiety? It may not have been diagnosed or you may not have realized it was anxiety at the time but now, looking back, you may recognize the symptoms.

We look to our parents or caregivers to see how to function in the world, how to communicate with and treat others, how to treat ourselves, how to problem solve and manage emotions. If you had someone with anxiety modeling this behavior then you would learn to think and react in a similar manner. You may even think the symptoms of anxiety are just part of your personality, part of who you are. You could describe yourself as being a worrier, nervous, fearful or careful, an introvert, not that social or controlling, aggressive, dramatic, abrasive, abrupt, sensitive, emotional.

But this may not be who you are at all. It may really be symptoms of anxiety instead. This anxiety, these fears, aren’t yours. They belong to whomever modeled this behavior for you.

Exercise Questions:

Assess the similarities between you and this person or people. Don’t discount it if the person is much worse than you by thinking, “Oh I’m nothing like them.” There could still be similarities that are triggering your symptoms.

Exercise Questions:

Reassess your functioning in the world and what are truly your fears and not theirs. For example, we could get anxious when we meet new people because we believe we’re not good at meeting new people. We’re scared of embarrassing ourselves or of not being accepted.

Exercise Questions:

Which came first- this outcome or this belief? Were you once an outgoing, social kid but had a horrible experience of being rejected by your peers, which then led you to create this belief? Or did you already learn this belief through someone else’s fears and then the fear confirmed your belief?

If you discover your beliefs came from someone else and not your own experiences in life then the beliefs need to be reworked and replaced.

Journal Prompt: