Anxiety Is Traffic. Let Me Explain!
Imagine your mind as a highway. The kind of highway where thoughts zip past you like cars, moving back and forth at all hours. Some days, traffic is smooth and manageable. Other days, it’s a full-blown rush hour — bumper to bumper, engines revving, horns blaring. That’s what anxiety feels like for a lot of people.
Now picture this: When you’re stressed, your body releases cortisol, a hormone that tells the cars (your thoughts, your physical sensations) to move faster. Suddenly, the highway is alive with motion. Everything speeds up. Your heart races. Your chest tightens. You can’t think clearly because there’s just too much noise and motion all at once.
If something triggers your nervous system — even a thought about what might happen — your brain responds like there’s real danger. That’s preanticipatory anxiety. You haven’t even entered the situation yet, but your body’s already slamming the gas pedal down.
Now, here’s the part most people overlook: your body has a natural braking system. When the danger is over (or when your brain thinks it’s over), it releases GABA — a calming neurotransmitter I like to compare to fog rolling in on the highway. It doesn’t stop traffic completely, but it slows things down. It forces people to take their foot off the gas. It lets your body and mind exhale.
But sometimes, that fog doesn’t roll in the way it should. And the traffic keeps flying — which is when people turn to medications like Xanax.
Think of Xanax as a drug that finds that GABA fog and makes it denser. It thickens the haze over the highway so much that your foot has no choice but to ease off the gas pedal. That’s why it can feel so effective — the noise, the motion, the chaos suddenly quiets down. But here’s the thing: if that fog rolls in too often, too thick, or without control, it doesn’t just calm the chaos… it starts making you afraid of the road itself.
That’s the double-edged sword.
Xanax is powerful. But it doesn’t fix the traffic. It doesn’t teach your body how to slow itself down naturally. It just pulls the emergency brake.
When I talk to patients about anxiety — especially that overwhelming “I-can’t-even-breathe” type that hits before anything even happens — I remind them that the goal isn’t to block out the road. It’s to learn how to drive through it, even during rush hour.
That’s where real healing comes from — not just from medication, but from understanding your own nervous system. From giving your brain a map and your body some support. From recognizing that the fog (GABA) is already inside you, and your job is to help it roll in when you need it most — through movement, breathwork, grounding, therapy, and connection.
So if you’re feeling like your highway is spinning out of control — you’re not broken. You’re just caught in traffic with a heavy foot on the gas. And your body is begging you to ease off.
You’re not alone out there. You never were. 🐾
- Adam Scott
Original Publish: 08/17/2025
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