Why Do I Have Anxiety for No Reason? An IFS Look at Your Anxious Part

You've had a pretty good day. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. Yet for some reason there's this anxiety slowly creeping up in your system. Maybe you even woke up with it, and there's a big question inside of you: why is this here? This doesn't make sense.

If you've been dealing with anxiety that seems to come from nowhere, I want to offer you a different way of looking at it. In my mind, there's almost always a reason. It's just not one your thinking mind can figure out yet.

My name is Conor McMillen. I'm an IFS coach, trained by the IFS Institute in 2014, and most of my work is helping people learn to do IFS on themselves. Anxiety is something I've worked with in my own system for as long as I can remember. I had it at six years old, and it peaked in my late teens and early twenties. It's changed a lot through practices like the one below.

WHAT IS IFS, IN PLAIN WORDS?

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a way of seeing yourself as made up of different parts. You already talk this way: "Part of me wants to go to the gym, and part of me wants to sit on the couch." That's IFS understanding. Different parts want different things at the same time.

The understanding in IFS is that every one of these parts is trying to take care of you as best it knows how. Many of them are protectors. They work to keep you away from something that feels bad or unsafe.

Underneath all of these parts is what IFS calls Self. That's you, right here in the present moment: calm, curious, and compassionate, with a lot of capacity and resiliency. If you want the fuller picture of managers, firefighters, and exiles, I walk through them in What Are the Parts of IFS?

WHY DO I HAVE ANXIETY FOR NO REASON?

Most likely, anxiety that seems to have no reason is a protector. It may not feel like it, and you may not have any conscious understanding of why yet, but that anxiety is there to protect you.

Parts pick up on things your thinking mind doesn't register. A tone of voice, a time of day, a date on the calendar, being tired, or things finally getting quiet after a busy week. Your thinking mind says nothing happened. A part noticed something.

So what is it protecting you from? In IFS, protectors very often guard what we call exiles: younger parts carrying some kind of old pain or burden that feels too big to get close to. Your anxious part keeps you away from that feeling. You don't need to go anywhere near an exile to work with anxiety. It helps just to know the anxiety has a job, and that job is keeping you from a feeling it believes is bigger than you can handle.

You may never know exactly what triggered it, and that's okay. A story that connects it to the past can be helpful, but it's not required. What helps most is self-awareness.

WHERE DO YOU FEEL YOUR ANXIETY?

Many of us know "I feel anxious" as a thought without connecting much with what it means. It helps to check three places.

• Your body. In my body, anxiety loads up in my neck. It's a tightness, like if someone massaged my neck there might be some relief. For a lot of people it's the chest or the stomach, but it could be anywhere: your hands, your legs, your head.
• Your thoughts. Anxiety often brings racing thoughts, and they're rarely about this present moment. They're about something in the past you wish had gone differently, or something in the future you're worried about.
• Your feelings. We call it anxiety, but is anything else there? Sadness? Frustration? A feeling of stuckness?

Noticing these is the first step, because the one doing the noticing is Self.

WHAT CHANGES WHEN YOU SAY "A PART OF ME IS ANXIOUS"?

Try this. Say "I am anxious" and notice what that feels like. For me, it feels like my whole system, my whole being, is anxiety.

Now say "a part of me is anxious." That tells your system that not all of you is anxious. If just a part of you is anxious, there's a whole lot of other stuff happening in there that you may have access to. It makes it a lot more manageable. You're the one in this present moment with capacity and resiliency, and you're experiencing a part of you that has anxiety.

WHY DOES "NO REASON" MAKE IT WORSE?

When anxiety shows up with no obvious cause, other parts usually show up with it. There's often a part that says, "There's no reason for this. It doesn't make sense." That part tends to bring a lot of judgment and criticism. Then there's often another part, up in the head, trying to figure it out. Could it be this thing? Could it be that thing? No, it's not that. Maybe it's this.

So now you may have three parts active: the anxiety, the part that says it shouldn't be here, and the part trying to solve it. When several parts are active at once, it's harder to bring Self forward.

None of these parts are doing anything wrong. The part trying to figure it out is a helpful part. We just want to give ourselves a little distance from each of them. We're not pushing anything away. We're saying, "I feel you there, I feel me here, and I feel the anxiety here."

CAN YOU FEEL GRATITUDE FOR YOUR ANXIETY?

For a lot of us, anxiety has been around a long time. I was one of those people who thought, what is wrong with me? I hate being anxious. I want to feel differently. That makes a lot of sense.

What if we soften that a little? Instead of coming at the anxiety with an accusatory "why are you here?", we bring in curiosity: "Huh, I wonder why I have this anxiety right now. I wonder what it's trying to tell me." These parts can feel uncomfortable, and it's reasonable to want to change how they show up. They're not our enemies, though. They're our allies, and they really just need our help.

A SHORT IFS PRACTICE FOR ANXIETY

This takes a few minutes. Go slowly and leave some real pauses after each question. It's a practice, so there's no outcome you need to get.

1. Take three breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth, a little slower each time. On the third one, fill your lungs as much as you can, hold it at the top for a count of two, then let it all out slowly.
2. Find it in your body. Where do you feel the anxiety right now? Your chest, your stomach, your neck? If you're able to, put a hand there and let the anxiety know, "I feel you." Whatever happens, let that be enough.
3. Shift the language. Move from "I am anxious" to "a part of me is anxious." You may notice a little space open up. Maybe it's just a teeny bit. That bit of space most likely means Self energy is here, even if it's 1% of you.
4. Ask how you feel toward it. From that place, turn toward the anxious part and ask yourself, "How do I feel toward this part right now?" If you notice you want it gone, or you don't understand why it's here, or you just don't like it, that's another part, and that makes a lot of sense. Let that part know it makes sense and see if it's willing to relax back a little. What you're looking for is some calm, curiosity, or compassion toward the anxiety. Curiosity is often the easiest one to find: "Huh, I'm curious about this part. What is it all about?"
5. Ask it a question. From curiosity, ask the anxious part, "What would you like me to know about you right now?" or "What are you trying to do for me?" Then wait. Notice if words come back, or energy, a feeling, a memory, or nothing at all.
6. Let it know you hear it. If you got a response and it makes sense to you, tell the anxiety, "I really hear you. That makes sense." If compassion isn't there, another part probably popped back in. Let that part know it makes sense too, and see if it will relax. If you have room for one more question, ask the anxiety, "What are you worried would happen if you didn't do this job?"
7. Thank it, if it's true. Only if you can feel it authentically, thank the anxiety for trying to take care of you in the best way it knows how. Then take a couple of breaths on the way out: breathe in gratitude for the parts that came up, and breathe out into more relaxation.

If you'd like another practice to try, my exercise for processing fear works with a part of you that's fearful in a similar way.

WHAT IF NOTHING HAPPENS?

That's completely okay. Nothing has to happen, especially at first, and it doesn't have to go the way I described it. Being consistent with a practice like this is what changes things over time. You're building self-awareness, you're creating some space between you and the anxiety, and you're giving your anxious part a chance to share its story, maybe for the first time. When parts get to share their story with us, they can often relax.

It also helps to practice before the anxiety shows up. Five minutes in the morning checking in with what's active in your body makes it easier to catch anxiety early, before it builds. If your anxiety tends to build into panic, my post on panic attacks and IFS goes into that.

IS IT SAFE TO DO THIS ON YOUR OWN?

This practice isn't meant to diagnose or treat an anxiety disorder or panic attacks. I really believe in doing this work on ourselves and for ourselves, and I also believe in working with other people. There's a time to take on the responsibility of becoming your own therapist and a time to get outside help, and only you can make that call. Doing both together can be really powerful. If you're new to doing IFS on yourself, Self-Led IFS Therapy: The Complete Guide covers the basics.

The last thing I'll leave you with: never go faster than the slowest part. If some part of you says, "I don't want to do this, this feels like too much," slow down, take a breath, and turn toward that part. If you need to stop and take a walk in the woods or call a friend, do that. This work goes best when it's slow, gentle, and consistent.