What is Anxiety Spiral? Causes and Ways to Prevent Anxiety Spiral

Trust me, I totally understand how it feels to remain in constant loop of stress, getting periodic hits of anxiety. It strangely consumes your energy, mood, and positive vibes to leave with less or zero energy with all negative emotions. You easily feel exhausted and lost when you consistently deal with stress and anxiety. Anxiety when gets compounded over a period of time it turns out to be some serious mental conditions leading clinical depression and also anxiety spiral. Being concerned about your own anxiety and changing moods is absolutely right and there’s nothing to be scared of or to be ashamed of. 

The fact is, a human mind is always concerned about something. It never remains empty, even in the REM sleep, some thoughts still continue to play in the form of dreams. Human mind finds it hard to not pay attention to anything, and it’s hard not to be worried about what’s going on around it. Very few intellectual and strong mindset people have the expertise to achieve a controlled mind with controlled thoughts and emotions.

It is very common to get a random thought popping inside your head especially the possibility of bad things happening in your future or something like a bad decision made by one in the past leading to another thought and after that with another one, which is without your knowledge you get launched into an anxiety spiral. And those negative thoughts loop around to consume your attention and energy to flood your body with stress hormones, negatively affecting your mood and behaviour.

Thus, an anxiety spiral starts with stressful life events associated with long-term worries or even unpleasant physical situations or sickness or even some serious medical conditions. The anxiety-vulnerable mind may disproportionately focus on these thoughts, misunderstanding them as real danger rather than what they are actually, the mere thoughts.

Causes of Anxiety Spiral

Anxiety spiral is a battle between our logical brain and our emotional brain. Our logical brain is located in the area of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) which is at the top/front of the brain and manages the highest level of brain functions. This logical brain gives executive orders to all the mental processes and the best ideas, plans, thoughts, and actions are cultivated here. The emotional centre is situated in the lower part of our brains which acts as a gloomy file storage basement and there our memories are processed and catalogued. Human sensations of fear and threat originates from there only which is called amygdala. And this is the place where the “fight-flight-freeze” process gets generated activating the anxiety which is a clear cause of anxiety spiral.

Inaptitudeness of dealing with the stress and anxiety triggers at their onset leads to an anxiety spiral. Human mind gets stuck in the ruts of the stress-induced mental pathways which keeps one trapped in a continuous loop. And the worst part is this process bypasses the logical brain or (PFC). Triggered anxiety is something like an emergency lockdown in human brains. The door to the prefrontal cortex is banged shut. This feels like running up and down the stairs, desperately seeking escape, someone can also feel like getting freeze, or stuck in a parked corner, or waiting for the threat to pass. These certain scenarios cause anxiety to skyrocket, thanks to the fearful screams. The reason is that humans cannot simply reason the way out of anxiety and thus, the anxiety spirals can so easily consume human brains.

Ways to Prevent Anxiety Spiral

To control your mind and thoughts which is the basic rule and imbalance that happens during anxiety spiral and causes anxiety spiral, one needs to get hold of their calmness and though process. Disturbed minds, incapability of managing emotions and feelings, and mentally vulnerable individuals can get easily under the trap of anxiety spiral. Thus, there are some simple and effective ways to prevent anxiety spiral on long-term. Here are the ways:

• Deep Breathing

Learn how to deep breathe. Know the intense pattern of your inhale and exhale process. It can be tricky but it has the potential to fight your inner anxiety monster effectively. This helps you to manage your fear, weaknesses, your reactions and responses. You learn how to keep your calm and how to manage situations and negative thoughts without triggering automatic negative thought process leading to anxiety spiral.

• Meditation

Meditation can always help you to get a good control over your thoughts, emotions, feelings and thought processes. It enables you to understand the intensity and the depth of your thoughts and emotions to manage it well. You become more well-aware of yourself and your mental state which helps you to control stress triggers, causes of anxiety without pushing you to the anxiety spiral, anxiety loop or even depression.

• Regular workout

Physical activities, exercising, yoga forms, or any sport activities boost good hormones in your body such as dopamine and norepinephrine that help in reducing and managing the effect of bad hormones especially the cortisol that acts as a trigger for anxiety spiral and even depression. Try to practice yoga or do workout regularly to manage and prevent anxiety spiral on long-term.

• Controlling ANTs

Automatic Negative Thoughts are the prime contributor to anxiety, stress leading to anxiety disorders and anxiety spiral or loop as well. Human mind has the power to create negative thoughts even in the subconscious and unconscious mind. Thus, one needs to learn to control these ANTs to manage negative thoughts effectively to stop the anxiety spiral which is one of the effective ways to prevent the anxiety spiral.

• Consuming Nervous System supportive nutrients

Your nervous system plays a great role in the anxiety spiral process which is technically a glitch we can say. Stress and anxiety are very easily managed with simple dietary additions such as vitamin B6 and magnesium that can help shift your body from fight-or-flight mode to a more relaxed state helping you to stay relaxed and calm. Foods rich in vitamin B6 are pork, eggs, poultry, bananas, wheat germ, oats, peanuts. Magnesium is the mineral that also helps in regulating human stress response, thus, try consuming magnesium rich foods or simply consult your doctor to add magnesium supplements in your diet.

• Practice normalizing your experiences

Your past experiences sometimes lead you to the guilt trip or life full of regrets, stress, depression, and even anxiety loop because you derive negative thoughts, vibes, reasons, lessons from them mostly. Thus, it is important to understand that whatever you experience in your life especially in your past and whatever you’re going to experience in future they are all good and better for your growth. They are meant to happen to boost you and give you strength to grow and flourish in your life. So, normalize your life experiences, nothing is bad.

• Accept life incidents as positive lessons

When you accept things, experiences, life incidents, happenings around you the way they are and find some positive lessons from them you actually boost your self-controlling power over your mind. You nurture positive energy to attract positive thoughts and emotions which over a period of time helps you to stay away from negative thoughts and inhibit the origin of anxiety spiral, which is another effective way to prevent anxiety spiral.