When anxiety narrows your world: adaptive or avoidant?

For this episode I’m speaking to clinical psychologist and author Dr Alexandra Shaker about her book The Narrowing and about how prolonged stress and trauma can constrict not just our nervous systems, but how we experience our lives and how we can identify when our narrowing might need to open up. When we’re anxious, especially chronically anxious, our worlds can begin to shrink. We say no more often. We avoid certain places. We reduce risk. We make life smaller so it feels manageable. I often describe it myself, when I’ve felt anxiety close in on me that I’m “making my world smaller so I could cope with it,” and at the time that felt protective, even necessary. But what happens when that narrowing becomes the default?

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