Anxiety and depression are among the most common mental health disorders that affect people from all backgrounds across the world. However, for people from BIPOC communities (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour), the issue is even more complex. Anxiety can arise from systemic stressors like cultural expectations, Intergenerational Trauma, immigration, racial discrimination, and more. This understanding of the unique challenges faced by BIPOC communities can help individuals feel validated in their experiences and the need for mental health support.

Anxiety can take many forms, including generalized anxiety, perfectionism, overthinking, social anxiety, panic attacks, and phobias. They impact brain function and heighten alertness and tension. Symptoms of anxiety can include restlessness, racing thoughts, difficulty concentrating, and physical discomfort like headaches or stomach pain.

Dealing with Anxiety: Understand the Neuroscience

Anxiety is not just “in your head”. It is a full-body response that involves neural circuits, hormonal responses, and emotional processing. When the brain detects a potential threat, whether real or imagined, it activates a cascade of reactions to manage the stressor.

Psychotherapists often use the analogy of a three-legged stool to help clients dealing with anxiety understand the neuroscience. Each leg represents a separate aspect of anxiety: the thinking mind, the physical body, and the emotional system. Managing anxiety requires addressing all three. Consequently, understanding the interconnectedness of the legs can provide effective and empowering strategies for dealing with anxiety.

1. The Thinking Mind: Cognitive Leg

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is the brain’s frontal lobe responsible for planning, decision-making, impulse control, and rational thinking. It develops in adolescence and matures in the 20s, forming powerful connections with the amygdala, the brain’s fear-processing center. Stressors activating the amygdala can hijack the PFC and rational mind. It influences cognitive processes and leads to emotional disregulation, irrational behaviour and negative thought patterns. Distortions such as catastrophizing and all-or-nothing thinking can surface when this occurs.

A vast body of research has linked persistent stressors in early childhood to decreased connectivity between these two brain sections. It could explain attention problems and aggression, which spiral into problems like school avoidance and difficulties forming healthy relationships in adulthood.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based psychotherapy treatment that strengthens ties between the PFC and amygdala. It builds neural pathways that support calm, rational thinking. Essentially, it retrains the brain to recognize irrational thought patterns, challenge unhelpful beliefs and replace anxious thoughts with realistic alternatives.

2. The Physical body: Physiological Leg

When the amygdala detects danger, it activates the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) by sending signals to the hypothalamus to release stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. This process evolved during prehistoric times to react to acute and short-term life-threatening events like being chased by a predator or surviving a flash flood. It activates our fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses. Typical symptoms include a racing heart, tense muscles, and shallow breathing. It slows down other systems like digestion, allowing the body to focus all its energy on reacting to the threat.

In modern life, most of our stressors come from chronic issues, like financial challenges, problems at work, social media, family and social matters. Applying a system designed for short-term stress relief to prolonged circumstances leaves the SNS in a state of hyperarousal, throwing people outside their window of tolerance and unable to return to balance.

Therapists deploy treatments like deep breathing and vagus nerve activation to activate the parasympathetic system, which helps the body return to calm. Yoga and progressive muscle relaxation can release tension in the body. Exercise and movement release dopamine and serotonin to improve mood and neutralize the effects of cortisol and adrenaline. Good sleep hygiene, hydration and nutrition can support brain function and hormonal balance.

When we calm the body, we signal to the brain that it’s safe, creating a feedback loop that reduces anxiety.

3. The Emotional System: Limbic Leg

The third leg of anxiety lies in our limbic system, the emotional center of the brain. It includes the amygdala, hippocampus, and insula. These areas process fear, store memory, and emotional salience. Experiences of past trauma or chronic stress can cause them to overreact to perceived threats, even when they are not real. This emotional overactivation can lead to heightened sensitivity to stress, difficulty self-soothing and feelings of shame, inadequacy, or panic.

To strengthen the emotional leg, therapists will use Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) to access and process core emotions and build capacity for regulation. Mindfulness and grounding techniques activate the insula, reduce emotional reactivity and develop body awareness. Self-compassion and trauma-informed practices help retrain the emotional brain to feel safe and connected. Understanding this neuroscience helps rewire the limbic system to transform fear-based behaviour patterns into grounded and regulated ones.

Steadying The Stool

When dealing with anxiety, it’s crucial to understand that your system requires stability from all three legs, just like a stool. Focusing on just one aspect, such as a physical exercise routine, will not be effective if your thoughts and emotions remain distressed. Recognizing and addressing the interconnections between the mind, body, and emotions enables you to train your prefrontal cortex to work with, not against, your emotional brain. This holistic approach can support your nervous system in recognizing that you are safe and nurture the limbic system to release old fear loops and create new emotional memories.

Dealing with Anxiety: Seeking Professional Help

Empowering individuals to respond to anxiety with compassion, not fear, can create a grounded, resilient foundation for healing. However, this process may not be easy to accomplish on your own.

At Shanti Psychotherapy, we have experienced therapists to help you deal with anxiety and heal your brain, body and heart. We are a multicultural and multilingual team that brings confidentiality, compassion and culturally relevant care to you. If you or someone you know is struggling with anxiety, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.