Anxiety: The Double Edge Sword of the Mind

I wanted to write a short piece exploring how anxiety resembles the immune system. As a person who has battled anxiety for many years and a Biologist, I have found many parallels. As a disclaimer I am not a licensed clinical psychologist, and this should be read as an opinion piece by someone with a scientific background. I hope my thoughts and experiences help anyone reading this to understand a bit more about anxiety and how it is kind of like the immune system of the mind.

Firstly, what is anxiety?

Anxiety is a mental and physical experience that results from the anticipation of something. It has been described to me more simply as “the fear of fear.” Anxiety stems from the most primal part of our brain, the amygdala. It is responsible for memory, decision making, and emotional response. Its role is to recognize danger from past experiences and help trigger what is well known as a “flight or fight” response. The chemical responses come from adrenaline which is released from the adrenal glands above the kidneys. A slew of other chemicals is released in order to trigger this response (i.e. cortisol). There are many more thorough articles that explore the chemical and physiological mechanism for how anxiety is initiated that will not be discussed here.

In the modern world, we can often encounter experiences that trigger these chemical responses when we don’t have immediate danger. The reasons for this vary widely. How this was described to me by a therapist is it is a general disconnect between the frontal lobes (dictates logic) and the amygdala. There is a lack of rational communication between these areas of the brain to override the “danger signal” and it persists without regulation.

Since the amygdala controls memory, it stores past experiences for us to recognize danger before it approaches.

This is similar to the adaptive immune system. Immunity can be broken down into two main categories: the innate immune system for immediate response and the adaptive immune system that provides longer term immunity and protection. The innate immune system is great as acting as first responders when there is a bacterial infection. Its goal is to recognize the foreign coating on bacteria cells that differs from human cells and destroy it via phagocytosis (eating the bacteria) or other means. The adaptive immune system is great for viral infections. After the first encounter with a virus, the immune cells are educated on the best way to tackle the threat again. This is not dissimilar to anxiety.

Once a threat is realized, there is a clonal expansion (copying the immune cells which respond to the antigen) that quickly and effectively recognize this antigen in the future. You can think of the antigen in this analogy as a bad experience or memory.

If you were attacked by a man in a yellow hat, your amygdala would store this information to be on the lookout for all men in yellow hats (the antigen).

However, sometimes the threat isn’t that obvious and can sneak up on you.

In the immune system there are often multiple clones that expand when recognizing an antigen. This is because the target is broken down and recognized in “mers” or parts. Our mind can do the same thing. Perhaps we also took into account the place, the weather, or what we ate for breakfast that morning. These details stick with us and seem to creep up in unexpected ways.

So if you catch yourself feeling overwhelming anxiety “without cause” this might be the case. Often times when I reflected on an anxiety attack, I realized that the trigger was something mundane. Sometimes I never got an answer and would just have to record events leading up to the attack to help pinpoint what it might have been (if it was any one thing).

The immune system is a double edge sword. Much like a sword it can be used as protection or can be the object on which we cut ourselves. We depend on the immune system to protect us from invaders, but it can have an exaggerated response to something that is seemingly harmless or in the case of auto-immunity, ourselves. The body is flooded with histamine or our cells begin to attack each other.

Anxiety functions much the same way in that we have an exaggerated response to something that would not normally be considered a threat. The mind; however, is just functioning as it is supposed to do. Detect threat. Get rid of threat.

From personal experience, this can be painful. However, I try to remind myself that becoming frustrated with how my body and mind is supposed to function isn’t helpful. Instead, I had to find tools to curb and manage situations to damper this response.

Much like popping an anti-histamine to calm the immune system down, it helps finding a calm space in my mind can help relieve these symptoms. In other cases, taking some kind of action (focusing on what I can control about the situation in a non-destructive manner) has been helpful.

During some low points where I had extreme anxiety/depression I used medications such as SSRIs/serotonin modulators as I realized this was a response needing biochemical modification.

For me, this was short term. For others, this is a lifelong need.

I have tried to build skills to approach my anxiety as I see these medications as a steroid. A way to drastically inhibit the “immune response” of the mind. Steroids can be lifesaving against damaging inflammation, but leaves your body open to secondary infections with the players of your immune system in the penalty box. My anxiety and ability to detect danger needed to be dampened but not eliminated.

My experience with medication was that I couldn’t hold onto any anxious thought, which provided temporary relief. The cause of my anxiety; however, had been people lacking boundaries. In toxic situations where my personal boundaries were violated on a daily basis, I became slightly more complacent with medication. However, the root cause of the anxiety wasn’t being addressed, and this allowed people to infect my life without motivation to fend them off. This is why I decided to make difficult decisions to change certain aspects of my life. This would have been the perfect playground for anxiety to show up and do its job. Nevertheless, with some luck and help of others I was able to push through. I stopped medications in order to be able to detect where boundaries needed to be placed. My amygdala services an important function in my daily mental health, but it can’t be allowed to take over. Again, these are my personal experiences. If you need medication daily that is also fine and a discussion to have with your doctor and therapist.

In summary, what I wanted to express is that anxiety stems from a very normal part of how the brain functions to keep me alive, much like the immune system. However, this can come with some consequences when it “overreacts.” Finding ways to strike an appropriate balance mentally and biochemically have helped me cope with flair ups. I wanted to share my experience for anyone who might feel alienated or frustrated with themselves. There isn’t anything wrong with you. Your mind might be working a little harder than it should at times, but be patient and kind to yourself when it does.

If you are someone who does not struggle with anxiety, but have a loved one who does, please treat them as you would if you saw someone who was having an allergic reaction. Understand that people are still accountable for their behavior (in the case of anxiety), but they are also dealing with a cellular or biochemical response that can be difficult to manage at times.

Please let me know what you think of this work, and if this changed your perception of anxiety or the immune system! Or if you want to just share your experiences as well 😊