Anticipatory Anxiety

A few months before JT was born, I began to worry. "What if's" filled my head: "what if I don't love him?" "What if I begin to ignore my older son?" I knew these were normal thoughts. In the seventh month, my doctor and I discussed and scheduled a planned c-section. I had a date that my son would arrive! I had mixed feelings about this and started to dwell on the c-section procedure. During a regular appointment, I broke down crying in front of my OB. She asked me if I would consider seeing a therapist. I said "but isn't this normal to be emotional?" She said that at this time, I should be experiencing euphoric feelings as my body was pumped with good-feeling hormones. Since I experienced some "baby blues" after my last birth, my emotional state now increased my risk of a deeper depression post-partum.

I planned to see a therapist. Even against my husband's wishes. He felt talking to a therapist was invasive on our privacy and a sign of weakness in the relationship we had. He felt that I should be able to talk it out with him and get over it that way. This made me feel even worse. I decided that my well-being, and the well-being of my family, were too important to NOT go see a professional.

My therapist was wonderful. In our first visit, she gave me a term for what I was feeling: anticipatory anxiety. It is the anxiety that one experiences before starting a challenging activity. Typically, this pre-event anxiety is much higher than what one actually ends up experiencing during the event. Once I had this term, I felt that I could better handle my emotions. The c-section went just fine with fewer complications than I anticipated.

As one resource states, "Why do we experience anticipatory anxiety? I think it’s because the panic response is over-zealous about doing its job: trying to locate any danger, in order to protect us. When it can’t find any danger in the present, it looks into the future...Each time you actually start the new activity–bringing the activity into the present–the anticipatory anxiety fades away."

Yoga teaches us to be in the present. I have thought about this with regards to my tendency to worry about things that may happen in the future. Focusing on the present and being here, calming my mind from the bombardment of worries I hear and read about, should help me better control this anticipatory anxiety in the future.