“Is This Really a Threat?” The Key Question You Need to Ask Anxiety

What if the things making you anxious aren’t actually threats?

Jessica explores one of the most important shifts in healing anxiety: learning to separate what is an actual threat from what simply feels threatening because your survival system has been activated.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Jessica brings together everything covered in the series so far — your biology, modern living, and the messages you learned — and explains how these three things work together to make everyday situations feel dangerous, urgent, or threatening… even when you aren’t truly in danger.

Through relatable examples — including her own experience deciding whether to start a private practice — she explains why anxiety feels so intense, why it reacts the way it does, and how asking a simple question can begin to reduce anxiety in a powerful way.

In This Episode You'll Learn:

•  How biology, modern living, and learned messages work together to create anxiety 
•  Why anxiety interprets many normal life situations as threats 
•  The difference between something being uncomfortable and something being truly dangerous 
•  Why your survival system reacts so intensely even when you’re safe 
•  How anxiety creates feelings that don’t accurately represent reality 
•  A simple but powerful question that can begin to reduce anxiety 
•  Why understanding anxiety changes the way you respond to it 

Key Moments From the Episode

“One thing about anxiety is that it interprets all kinds of things as immediate, harmful threats to you, when they’re not.”

“There are things are not usually actual threats to you. They may be things that need to be addressed… but they are not true threats to you.”

“Is this really a threat? Am I really being threatened? Am I really in danger? The answer is almost always going to be no.”

“Anxiety makes it feel so threatening — the feeling it creates doesn’t accurately represent what’s happening.”

“That’s not your fault. That’s exactly what anxiety does.”

Main Takeaway

Anxiety makes many everyday situations feel dangerous, urgent, or threatening — even when you are not actually in danger.

Your survival system reacts this way because of your biology, the overwhelm of modern life, and the messages you learned throughout your life. When you begin asking yourself, “Is this truly a threat?” you create space between yourself and anxiety. That space helps your nervous system stop treating ordinary life like a survival emergency.

Understanding this changes everything: anxiety becomes less personal, less confusing, and more workable.

Who This Episdoe is For

This episode is for you if you:

•  Feel like your anxiety reactions are bigger than the situation 
•  Constantly feel “on alert” or overwhelmed 
•  Struggle to tell the difference between discomfort and danger 
•  Overthink decisions, conversations, or mistakes 
•  Feel emotionally exhausted from living in survival mode 
•  Want a clearer understanding of what anxiety is actually doing 

Connect With Jessica

Instagram: @jessica_richards_counseling

My Book "Hi, It's Anxiety! I'm Your Problem, It's Me": Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Enjoy This Episode?

If this episode helped you understand your anxiety in a new way, please follow the show and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps more people find compassionate, realistic support for anxiety.

*Disclaimer* This show is for information and inspiration. It is not professional mental health counseling or medical advice. If you're struggling, please reach out to a mental health or medical professional.

Topics Covered in This Episode

•  what anxiety really is 
•  perceived threats and anxiety 
•  survival system and anxiety 
•  why anxiety feels so intense 
•  fight flight freeze explained 
•  how anxiety reacts to everyday situations 
•  anxiety and nervous system activation 
•  difference between danger and discomfort 
•  understanding anxiety triggers 
•  reducing anxiety through awareness 
•  modern life and anxiety 
•  anxiety and overthinking 
•  why anxiety feels threatening 
•  how to calm anxiety naturally 
•  healing anxiety through understanding

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When you have anxiety, is something really wrong? That is the question that I'm gonna help you start asking yourself. Over the last three episodes, we have covered the real causes of anxiety. And now it's time to figure out what do you do about them. Asking yourself if there's something really truly dangerous, wrong, and bad immediately happening, if there's really a threat when you have anxiety, is going to be a huge step in helping you change and reduce anxiety, feel better, and feel better about your life. Yay! So exciting. This is Jessica Richards, and it's not you. It's anxiety. So whoo! We did it. We talked about the three things that actually come together to create anxiety. You know the the big secret now. You know the things that no one tells you because no one puts all these pieces together. No one puts these three things together. And putting these three things together, your biology, your physiology, this modern environment that we're living in, and the messages you learned, the the way society and your family and culture and other people in your life have sent you these messages and shaped your anxiety. When you put all of these three things together, that is what starts to allow you to be able to actually stop beating yourself for up from anxiety, seeing kind of clearly, like, hey, this is not my fault. Stop blaming yourself and then actually understand the factors that you need to change to start experiencing less anxiety. So you have less anxiety and you feel better. Yay! That's what we're going for. So I'm so glad that you stuck through these three three things and this process. But so let's recap real quick before we start talking about what is really a threat. So three things have come together to create anxiety: your biology, modern living, and the messages you learned. Your normal biology makes you anxious because it's looking for threats, it's looking for the things that could go wrong, the things that could hurt you. Your sympathetic nervous system, or what I like to call the survival system, because it's just easier and it describes what it actually does, makes you do this. It's a totally normal part of your biology. Every human being and animals actually has this and it's responsible for keeping us safe, keeping us alive, looking for what's wrong, scanning for what's wrong, and then reacting to protect us with fight, flight, freeze. So the survival system is always looking for threats. It is always looking, but it is really bad at telling what's actually threatening to you. So it reacts all the time with these survival reactions, these this fight, flight, freeze, regardless of whether there's an actual threat to you or it just thinks there's a threat to you. And when you have this survival reaction, it affects your mind, your thoughts, your body, your emotions. You have anxiety. So anxiety is this looking for threats and then reacting to those supposed threats. So the big buzz lately is regulate your nervous system, regulate your nervous system. Well, this is this is what they're talking about when they're talking about anxiety in the nervous system. That is one piece of anxiety. Okay, number two is this modern life, this modern environment that we're living in. It's really too much for the survival system. So you have this survival system that is really bad at telling what's actually threatening and what's not. And their survival system didn't develop for this modern life. It developed when we were living in a completely different environment. There was less stimulation, less information, less exposure, just less, less um, it was slower. Life was slower. So there was so much less for your survival system to have to sort through to decide what's threatening and what's not. Or just there was less to stimulate it, there was less to activate it. So modern life is really too much for this survival system, and your our survival system has not evolved and it's not meant for this modern life. So your survival system can't sort through everything that's happening to decide what's really a threat to you and what's not. So it's always being stimulated and activated, but it can't tell what's actually dangerous and it just reacts to everything. So things that aren't immediately tied to your survival, aren't life or death, aren't threatening, are treated like survival-level threats, which makes you anxious because it's perceiving things all the time, and modern life is a lot. So it's it's triggering this and making you anxious all the time. And I think this is something we hear people talk about a little bit in relationship to anxiety, right? But sort of more on the personal level of like what's going on in your life. But really, this is bigger than just your individual life. This is like the way we all live in the world. Okay, so that's number two. Number three are the messages that you've learned. So these are the things that you've been taught, that you've been shown, that you've experienced, that you've observed throughout your life that have told you what to be anxious about. They've told you, you, you know, your, your, yourself, me, they've told me, Jessica, what to be anxious about. But really, more than that, they are telling my survival system, my nervous system what to be anxious about. And they have taught my nervous system what it needs to be anxious about. So these messages tell you what to be anxious about, what's a threat, and therefore what to react to. That's why some people react to something that you wouldn't react to at all, right? Or I'm anxious about things that you wouldn't be anxious about. We all have these different kinds of, you know, um, triggers or circumstances or, you know, ideas about things that make us anxious, and it's different. So messages have come from everyone, everywhere, and they've been about everything. They have ranged from your physical or kind of practical survival, you know, like wear your seatbelt, to your existence as a human being, like who who you are as a person, whether you're a good person, whether you're the right person, what you need to do, um, how you need to be or how you should be to be safe and accepted and loved and cared for by the people around you. So you're not even aware of many of these messages. They just are the default. They feel like how life is, they're the things you believe, the way you operate, but they constantly fuel anxiety and have shaped your anxiety, determining what you're anxious about. So remember from episode five, anxiety is about threats, looking for threats and protecting you from threats. Things that could go wrong, that could be uncomfortable, that could hurt you, that could harm you in some way. And remember too, threat is kind of a loose term, especially in modern life. Anxiety perceives many things as threats. Someone not liking you, having to have a difficult conversation with your partner, but even like tripping up on your words at the coffee shop or forgetting someone's name, anxiety sees those things as threats. So one thing about anxiety is that it interprets all kinds of things as immediate, harmful life or death threats to you when they're not. But it treats them like they are and it reacts to them like they are. And this is why your anxiety is so intense. So these three things, your biology, modern living, and the messages that you learned all come together to make you see threats and then react to those threats, to make you anxious, see threats, react to those threats. They all create anxiety and they make you modern biology, modern living, and messages create anxiety by making you look for, perceive, and then react to things that could supposedly harm, things that could supposedly harm you, threats, bad things that could happen. So they make you look for and see threats and then react to those threats. But the problem is that many of those things are not actual threats that your survival system should be responding to. Your survival system is meant for immediate life or death in the moment threats. It is not supposed to be responding to a difficult conversation with your spouse or tripping up on your words at the coffee shop, but it does. So the things that it reacts to, like having a difficult conversation with your spouse or tripping up on your words at the coffee shop, those aren't immediate threats. They're things that need to be addressed, that need to be dealt with. It's okay, you know, that anxiety recognizes, like, oh, this is important. I need to do something here, and that you find a solution or you deal with it, but they're not true threats to you. And anxiety makes it feel like they are, it reacts like they are with a survival system reaction, which is why you feel so anxious. So in episode five, we talked about asking yourself, what is the threat that I'm seeing or that anxiety is seeing? What is the bad thing that I think could happen to me? But here, now, we're going to take it to the next step. Because when these three things come together to create you, to make you see threats, one of the first wild ways that we're going to start to reduce anxiety is to ask yourself, what is the threat that I'm seeing? What is the bad thing I think could happen? And then is this really a true threat? Am I really being threatened? Am I really in danger? Is this really immediate life or death? And the answer is almost always going to be no. And what I mean by this is that you're not being threatened, immediately threatened in this moment. Your biology, your survival system does not need to be responding with a fight, flight, or phrase response. You are not in immediate danger. So a survival reaction isn't warranted and it's not helpful. In fact, it's actually counterproductive. But it's not warranted and it's not helpful. But anxiety makes it feel so threatening, and the feeling that it creates doesn't accurately represent what's happening. And that's not your fault. That is exactly what anxiety does because of biology, modern life, and messages. Your survival system, because of those three things, reacts as if things are actually threatening when they're not. That's what's happening. That's what's happening with anxiety. So I want to give you a really concrete example of this that I experienced. And this was actually the first time that I realized that anxiety was treating something like a threat, was seeing a threat, and treating it like it was immediately threatening when it wasn't. This is the first time I realized this. So back in 2019, I was trying to decide. I was finishing graduate school and I was trying to decide whether to start a private practice for counseling, my own business, or applying or whether to apply for a job as a counselor with the county. And I was just so incredibly anxious. I mean, it was terrible. It felt awful. I just, I was like hyped up all the time and I couldn't stop thinking about it. And it felt like life or death. Honestly, like it felt like I was going to die. Like I trying to make this decision, and then whatever I decided, it felt like it was gonna die. Like it was gonna be terrible and wrong. And I just I couldn't, I didn't know, I was so anxious. I trying to make this decision. So, like I said, this was around the time that I was really starting to understand what anxiety really was. And I remember sitting there one day, like making this pros and cons list and trying to sort through all this, and I remember asking myself, okay, why am I so anxious about this? And I realized I felt like there was a threat. Making this decision was a threat. Opening a private practice was a threat. Working for the county was a threat. It felt like I was being threatened. Like there was a threat and there was no way out, and I didn't know what to do. And so remember, a threat is just something that could hurt me, that could be uncomfortable, something bad that could happen. You know, and living on the savannah back in the day, you know, when we weren't living in modern life, a threat looked like getting attacked by a tiger. But in modern life, a threat can look like picking the wrong job, not knowing which job to pick, working for someone else, taking the job, it felt like there was a threat. Starting a private practice, my own business, it felt like there was a threat. So both those things felt dangerous, threatening, like something bad could happen. And that was sort of the first revelation to understand that both those things felt like a threat. Oh, okay, this is why I feel so anxious because I feel threatened. Yeah, that makes sense. That totally makes sense. But then I went to this next step and I was like, okay, but what are the threats in each of these choices? What are the supposed bad things that could happen? Okay, I work for someone else and you know I'm uh uh selling myself short, I get stuck, I have a terrible boss, I don't like the kind of work that I'm doing, I'm stuck in this schedule, I don't like and I get trapped and I can't get out. Okay. I work for myself, I start my own business. I don't know how to do that. I don't know if I can get clients, I um am not gonna make money right away. Um, what if I'm not cut out for like the admin side of running a business? What if I fill out a form wrong and or I break a law or you know, I'm responsible for all this. It's all on me. What if I make a mistake? What if I mess up? Okay, so there's there's like these bad things, these threatening things that could happen on both sides. And those are, you know, really genuinely like my anxiety felt like those were life or death. Like I could die. They feel life-threatening. And then I took it one step further and I was like, wait, but are they really? Am I are these really like immediate like life or death threats? Like if I take this job and I realize I don't really like it, is that a life or death threat? If I open a business and it's a struggle, is that a life or death threat? And it's and like especially right now, like is it like I am going to die? No. No. What I realized was these are not life or death threats. These are not truly actually threatening to me right now. Either of these choices would bring challenges that I may need to solve. Things that I would need to figure out if they didn't work out the way I wanted them to, things that I would need to address, but I could navigate those things. I could figure them out, I could do them. So there was there's things that would like I would need to do, but these were not truly survival system threats at the level that my survival system made them out to be. My survival system is treating them like a tiger. They're not a tiger, they're not immediately threatening, they're not immediately life-threatening. So the way that I felt was disproportionate, was inaccurate, given the level of threat that was actually here. And it's really confusing. I didn't know that until that moment, that something feeling like a threat does not mean it's an actual threat. The survival system is misinterpreting it, it's reacting with a sympathetic nervous system response like it's life or death. Fight, flight, freeze. And it's not. And that level, that anxiety level of reaction, actually keeps me from being able to do anything, to make a choice about these two things, and then to figure out what I need to do to make them happen. So this is very, very, very important to get. Because when you see, when you ask, is this truly a threat? It starts to change how you perceive the situation or the it starts to change how you perceive whatever you're anxious about. It starts to change how you perceive anxiety. And it has this potential to sort of drastically reduce and change your anxiety and direct you away from anxiety and put your effort and energy in the right place, which is like a productive, helpful place, right? So, what I really needed in this moment was to not to feel like I was gonna die, but to look at each of these and kind of see like what the challenges were, how I would feel if these things happened that I don't like, like, what would I be able to do? I needed to be able to like be sort of calmer and think clearly and look at these sort of realistically and be in a problem-solving mode and figure out like what I needed to do, that is so much more helpful, not only in making this decision, but in addressing whatever challenges would come up in each of those, um, like whatever decision I made, if there was challenges I needed to address, being in that place of calmness and clarity and being able to figure out what I need to do is so much more helpful than being stuck in anxiety, feeling like I'm gonna die. Do you see that? Like, it's kind of wild. So at this point, I could tell you a million stories like that that have happened over the last several years. As I have applied this principle over and over and over in my life over the last seven years, two things have happened. One, I've been able to do things, incredible things, that I would have never been able to do before I figured this out. I've been able to do things that I would have felt like were impossible before, or probably more accurately, I've been able to do things that I just would have been so incredibly anxious about that I just could have never done the thing. The anxiety just would have stopped me. So I've been able to do so many things that I never would have been able to do before. And number two, I've been able to feel so much better. I don't live with the constant level of anxiety that I used to. It is so much easier, it is so much better. Better than the way that I used to feel. I feel so much better. Anxiety still comes up. Yes, totally. And especially like when new situations or really big challenges come up. But now I know exactly what to do when it comes up. And I mean, it usually pretty quickly, depending on the situation, dies down or the level reduces. And then, you know, I'm not at that high level and I'm kind of at this lower level and figuring out what to do. So I'm able to put my energy, instead of being anxious, I'm able to put my energy toward planning and addressing situations, figuring things out, and then also just putting my energy toward things that really matter to me, that are enjoyable, that I want to do, that I'm excited about, that I value, instead of all that energy going into worry and overthinking and analyzing and rumination, freaking out, getting frozen, instead of all that energy just going into anxiety. So this has been life-changing. And this isn't the full answer. There's there's a lot of other stuff that we need to do uh to help with biology, modern living, and messages. But this is sort of like that first big piece is recognizing that you feel like something is a life or death threat, like you're gonna die. It's so intense. And and asking yourself, what is the thing, what is the threat, what is the thing that I'm worried is going to happen? And then is it truly a threat? Because if your system thinks something is truly a threat to you and it's reacting from fight, flight, freeze, there's you're going to be anxious, and there's not gonna be much space to not be anxious. So this is like this is labeling things and seeing things more accurately. Yes, there is a challenge. Yes, there is something I'm worried about, but I'm not being immediately threatened. It's something I need to address or plan for or figure out, yes, but it's not a threat, it's not life or death. I don't need a survival system reaction. This can start to really shift things for you and eventually change your life. And this will set up everything else that you need to do to help manage and reduce anxiety. So this is really, really exciting. So here's your job, or the you know, the little task, the little tidbit for you to work on. When you have anxiety or pick something in your life that you know that you often have anxiety about, look and see what is the threat? What is the thing that you think is threatening? And then ask yourself, is this really truly a survival level threat? Is this the kind of threat that my survival system, my sympathetic nervous system, should truly be responding to? And again, almost always you're going to say no. And when you say that no, when you see that no, okay, let's take a beat. Let's take a minute. This isn't immediate, it's not life or death, you're not gonna die. It's okay, and we're gonna have we're gonna learn a different response to that. And we're gonna go over that. I can't, that's its own thing. I can't go over that now. But let's just start asking and then naming for ourselves. This is not an immediate survival life or death threat. My survival system is reacting like it is, but it's not. Whoa, wow, what a relief. Even as I just pretend saying that to you, oh, I can feel the sense of relief. It's just sort of an immediate sense of relief. And I'm not saying you're gonna totally relax and it's all gonna be okay right away, but it's gonna start to clarify it. It's gonna start to bring a little bit of relief and open that door to moving in a different direction. Like, yes, there is something that needs to be addressed here, but you're not being immediately threatened. So that's the part that you can start to work with, and we will continue on here. Good job. I'm so happy you're here as always. I'm so proud of you. Um, if you want to learn more and kind of jump ahead in this, I have a book. Hi, it's anxiety. I'm your problem, it's me. It's available on Barnes and Noble on Amazon. There's a link below, but I'm gonna keep talking about all this on here, and that book is there if you want it. All right, thanks so much. We'll see you next time to talk about the next steps in this process with anxiety. Bye-bye. Oh, and you're doing a good job. This is not necessarily easy work. In some ways it is, in some ways it isn't, in some ways it may be simpler than you thought, in some ways it's more complex than you thought, but you're doing a great job. So keep reminding yourself, offer yourself that compassion. Go back to episode two why you need to stop criticizing yourself and offer yourself compassion and recognize you're doing a great job here. Good job. I'm so proud of you.