The 4 layers of anxiety

Anxiety is a normal emotional response to certain situations, and constitutes an adaptive response to more or less stressful events in life.

In other words, a certain degree of anxiety is desirable for the normal handling of daily demands. It is an alert signal that warns of a danger and allows the person to take the necessary measures to face a possible threat; this makes the corresponding fight or flight response possible.

However, sometimes this level of alert reaches an excessive extreme.

• Related article: "What is anxiety: how to recognize it and what to do"

When anxiety becomes a problem

Anxiety is pathological when it goes from being an adaptive response to becoming a a discomfort that causes a deterioration in the life of the person with both physiological and cognitive symptoms. This can be caused either by an excessive level of anxiety in the face of possible danger, or by an anxiety response. inadequate that appears in the face of non-existent dangers but that part of the brain structure interprets as threatening.

This pathological anxiety is related to current or recent events, but also with events lived in the past that have generated beliefs, fears and defenses at a very deep level and that are affecting today.

Types of Associated Disorders

According to the diagnostic manuals of mental disorders, Anxiety Disorders include the following:

1. Generalized anxiety

excessive worry and persistent that occurs continuously.

2. Agoraphobia

Fear of being in open or crowded spaces.

3. Crisis of panic

episodes of heightened anxiety with intense somatic symptoms, which occurs without justifiable reason.

4. Social phobia

Fear of social situations such as meetings, parties...

5. specific phobia

High fear of specific situations or triggers (animals, objects…)

6. Posttraumatic stress

Excessive fear generated from an event experienced as dangerous or that has generated a change in the way of interpreting life or the world around us.

The layers of anxiety

Depending on the type of disorder and each person, psychological treatment may vary., always taking into account the different layers of the internal structure in which anxiety is present and the work to be carried out in each of them.

1. outer layer

Consider the person's current symptoms, current situations and triggers for anxiety, providing tools to manage your difficulties and to manage the symptoms of anxiety.

2. middle layer

It is necessary understand and work on cognitive structure and how distortions are affecting and maintaining anxiety.

3. inner layer

It is also essential to work with the parts of the personality that are generating these "alarms", parts that have been blocked and maintain fears that are sometimes invisible at a conscious level.

4. subconscious layer

Finally, we must uncover raw traumas, blocked beliefs, conflicts in the different parts of the personality.

Author: Mercedes Muñoz García