Out of the Blue to Blue's Clues: Finding Clues for Your Anxiety Triggers (Part I)

There are two categories of triggers for anxiety, outside stimuli (external triggers) and internal stimuli (internal triggers). External triggers are those things that occur outside of ourselves and include things such as sights, sounds, smells, and even florescent lighting!  Other external triggers include Over-stimulation, which is too much stimulation at one time and Under-stimulation, which is essentially boredom.

External triggers are common everyday events for all of us, such as a phone ringing, a song on the radio, or the smell of a barbeque.  These events are intimately connected to internal responses such as thoughts, feelings, memories, images and body sensations. A thought in response to the smell of a barbeque may be positive such as, "I'm going to have a delicious steak!"  That particular thought does not sound anxiety provoking.  The thought in response to a phone ringing such as, "That's a bill collector on the phone," however, may be a very anxiety provoking thought.  I'll start to discuss internal triggers first in my next few Shareposts and then conclude this series by connecting internal triggers to possible external triggers.

Internal Triggers:

Internal triggers occur inside of ourselves, that is, we experience them inside our minds and bodies.  As stated above, internal triggers may follow external triggers.  Internal triggers include:

Thoughts

Images

Feelings

Physical Sensations

Memories

Thoughts

Thoughts are an extremely powerful trigger for anxiety.   Some people have the thought, "I am going to have a panic attack" as soon as they have any noticeable physical sensation.  This thought in and of itself will increase anxiety.  Why?  Because the thought, "I'm going to have a panic attack" is scary!  It sounds like there is no way out. 

Again, if Jackie had that thought in response to being too warm, she could have been on her way to a panic attack.  Instead, she thought, "I am getting hot."  In addition, she did something about being too hot in that she took off her jacket.  There was a way out of her being too hot.

At this point you might be saying,  "That sounds nice, but what about those times when there is no way out and I really am trapped...like if I'm on an airplane or getting an MRI?"   My response is that you are never truly trapped.  You can always free yourself  from any situation using your thoughts.

Let's take the example of getting MRI, which is scary for a lot of people because of the extremely small space and noisiness of the machine.   Although there are lots of ideas about how to cope with getting an MRI, let's just focus on how thoughts might "untrap" you from an MRI.  Here are two ways in which one could "untrap" themselves using thoughts during an MRI.

Focus on others, not yourself