Anxiety can be one of those things that consistently paralyze you into inaction. Sometimes, it can even mimic a heart attack in order to get you to stop what you are doing and take an extended break far away from what triggers your anxiety. You live your life with a perpetual anxiety "gun," which is constantly loaded with the bullets that fill up and overwhelm you, and then the final trigger is pulled before you freak out and/or meltdown. In anxiety therapy, you will learn the following about your "bullets" and your "triggers."

Bullets Are Past, Present, or Future Things and Events

The "bullets" here are things or events in your life that cause an intense emotional response. These things and events can be from your past, your present, or even your future, which may sound a little strange because those things have not happened yet. 

Here are some examples: 

Past Events: You suffered a trauma in your childhood that has not quite healed. You feel stuck there every time you see or hear something that reminds you of that horrible event. If you do not flee, that reminder in the present, the feelings from the past trauma overwhelm you and make it nearly impossible to move or react. Your body immediately goes into overdrive in response to your inability to act.

Present Events: You are presently going through something really awful and quite horrible, or you have had a tragic loss of something very valuable to you. You are currently stuck on auto-pilot, just going through the motions while you fake-cope with the problems. Eventually, you cannot fake-cope anymore, and you break from both your real and unreal worlds in search of help.

Future Events: You are absolutely terrified that something will happen to you at a future day, date, or time. The event has not happened yet, but you are certain that it will and you persevere on this idea until the day, date, and/or time has passed. You frequently feel frantic, breathless, and you cannot sleep until that day/date/time has passed.

All of the above events create the "bullets" in your anxiety gun. Once your "gun" is fully loaded, things can only get worse before they get better. You will reach the moment where a simple trigger causes your anxiety gun to go off, and then you will really need a lot of therapy to come back down.

Your "Trigger"

With anxiety, your "trigger" is always the one thing that causes you to scream, explode, faint, run away, etc. It is well-described as the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. It is that last one thing that ties the rest of your anxieties together inside the anxiety gun, trips the bullets' release, and frees you of what has been building up inside. While this could be good, it usually is not because the response is always over-the-top. You need to identify the triggers, avoid them, and then decompress somewhere else.