It is 3am. You are lying awake, running a very thorough recap of every slightly ambiguous text message you have sent in the past fortnight. Your heart is doing something energetic. Your brain, rather than helping, has decided this would be an excellent time to also revisit that thing you said at a party in 2017.

And then there’s another voice in your head trying to help by telling you to ‘just breathe and relax’. How are you meant to do that?! You’ve got far more important things to fix than your breath and body state.

What anxiety actually is

Anxiety isn’t a personality failing, or a choice. It is a message from your nervous system telling you something is not right. This may or may not be so. There are many reasons your nervous system may be on high alert. Sometimes we need some anxiety/adrenaline/cortisol to manage a current and short-lived danger, but sometimes our ‘fight//flight/freeze response kicks in when it is not needed. It’s not a choice, and it’s not a personality failing. It’s your nervous system working overtime to keep you safe. The worrying, the vigilance, the catastrophising at 3am: those are your brain doing what brains do when they’ve learned that the world requires careful monitoring. Which is an exhausting way to live, but it makes sense when you have had to, perhaps since childhood, keep watch for cues of danger.

The trouble with “just relax” is that it skips straight past all of that. It treats anxiety as a switch you can flip, rather than a deeply learned response that took years to develop and requires a lot of self-compassion.

So what does actually help?

Being heard, for a start. There is something quietly powerful about naming what’s happening – not catastrophising it, not dismissing it, just saying: yes, this is here, it’s hard and it makes sense that I feel this way. Anxiety tends to thrive when it is pushed down, away or otherwise avoided. Being able to notice the anxiety first will help make space for some acceptance and self-compassion. From there, you can develop awareness of what’s going on in your nervous system. As the wonderful Deb Dana (a specialist in treating complex trauma) says, ‘If we could have thought our way out of this, we would have done so a long time ago’.

Understanding the cycle helps too. Anxiety isn’t random; it follows patterns. Once you start to recognise your particular version of it – the triggers, the thoughts, the physical sensations – it becomes a little less like being ambushed in the dark and a little more like something you can work with.

And talking to someone, properly, in a space where you don’t have to manage how the other person feels about what you’re saying – that can make a remarkable difference. Not because it makes the anxiety disappear overnight, but because you stop carrying it entirely alone. Being heard with acceptance is the first part of the journey to better self-regulation.

If any of this sounds familiar, you’re not unusual, and you’re not stuck. There’s a way through – it just tends to be a bit more involved than telling yourself to ‘relax’.

Counselling for anxiety in Bedford and online throughout the UK.