Your Brain Does Not Care If You Are Happy | Anxiety Therapy

Many clients are surprised, or even unconvinced, by this statement. Surely happiness is our purpose? Isn’t that what life is all about?

In short – no.

The brain’s job is to keep you safe. It is a harm-prevention machine, making sense of the world around you in order to fulfil this singular purpose. And it is extremely determined.

It will choose safety over happiness every day of the week. That’s a good thing, right? Well, not always.

This can present some challenges. Depending on the beliefs you hold about yourself, other people and the world, your brain can become hypervigilant for threat, and you may experience anxiety. In fact, you may experience anxiety at a level that literally overwhelms and paralyses you.

Those of us (and I do include myself here) who struggle with anxiety know that it can make enjoying life extremely difficult. Your brain is hardwired to anticipate danger and keep you safe.

But what if it sees danger everywhere? What if it believes that getting ill, letting others down, being rejected or needing the help of others is literally life-threatening – beyond awful, and something you simply can’t handle or survive?

If you hold a belief like this – one that is rigid, absolute and really not grounded in reality – it can drive thought patterns and behaviours that genuinely get in the way of living the life you desire.

And there’s more. This belief can become so familiar – so habitual and automatic – that it starts to represent safety. The brain loves what is familiar. It is naturally suspicious of change, which, let’s face it, can be hard work.

These beliefs become automatic and sit in your subconscious. You stop being aware of them, but they are triggered when your brain perceives a threat.

So, how can therapy help?

Firstly, the right therapy can build your understanding of anxiety. What is it? Why does it happen? And what is your brain trying to achieve?

Identifying those unhelpful beliefs and offering an alternative allows the brain to recognise what they are costing you and what an alternative could offer. Tools and techniques can provide a different perspective and help to lower that threat level, so you are not living in a constant state of survival.

We live in a world that can be overwhelming and overstimulating. It is not surprising that anxiety is one of the most searched-for terms on therapy directories. It makes up a large percentage of my clinical practice, and it’s a problem I genuinely enjoy working with.

Seeing clients have those light-bulb moments and change belief systems that may have impacted their lives for years, even decades, is especially rewarding.

If you’d like to discuss therapy, please get in touch.

Safety is good, but contentment matters too.

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