Understanding Anxiety Through Three Lenses
Anxiety is like a snake in the room. But not all snakes are the same. Some are memories, some are messengers, and some are imagined. Each form of anxiety calls for a different kind of response.
1. There was a snake in the room.
This is the realm of trauma.
The danger is over, but your body doesn’t know that yet. The nervous system is still holding the memory—not just the image, but the chemistry, the posture, the readiness to survive. In this case, anxiety is a residue of the past interrupting the present.
We don’t reason with this kind of anxiety—we release it.
What helps here is emotional or somatic processing. Trauma-informed care. Interventions that allow the body to complete what it couldn’t finish when the threat was real. We’re not trying to talk ourselves out of it—we’re helping the nervous system return to a present that is no longer unsafe.
2. There is a snake in the room.
This is the clearest and most useful form of anxiety.
The body alerts us. The heart races. The senses sharpen. This is anxiety doing what it was designed to do—mobilize us toward safety. The danger is real, and our reaction is appropriate.
We don’t pathologize this.
We listen. We move. We respond.
This kind of anxiety is often misunderstood as something to eliminate—but it’s a form of clarity. It tells us that something matters. The task here is to stay grounded enough to act with intention.
3. There might be a snake in the room.
This is the most common form of modern anxiety.
There’s no evidence of danger, but the mind loops through possibilities.
What if?
What then?
What next?
This is anticipatory fear—untethered from the moment we’re actually in.
Here, the work is cognitive. Mindfulness. Perspective-taking. Learning to notice the thought without fusing with it. We don’t argue with anxiety—we observe it, name it, and gently return attention to what is real now.
Not all anxiety is pathological.
Much of it is meaningful—if we learn how to listen.
- Sometimes we need to feel and release.
- Sometimes we need to act.
- Sometimes we need to reframe and return.
The wisdom lies in recognizing which “snake” is present, and offering ourselves the kind of support that fits.
