The men of the special operations unit stood lined up along the edge of the pool, clad only in swimwear. Behind them, the surface of the water rippled uneasily, betraying a quiet tension. Below, two divers hovered in the deep. One of them slowly raised a hand and closed it into a fist — a silent signal. The operation beneath the surface was ready. On the far side of the pool, a military physician nodded. The signal was mirrored above. Everything was set.
Moments later, the officer in command addressed the unit. The exercise was to begin.
Without protest, the men placed their hands behind their backs while the officer stepped forward to fasten a zip tie around each man’s wrists, tight enough to hold but loose enough to avoid cutting circulation. One after another, they surrendered control, placing their trust in the procedure and the person carrying it out. Before fastening each one, the officer paused for a moment, locking eyes with the soldier in front of him. No words were spoken, but the message was clear: trust me, and go with courage.
When no one could move their arms anymore, not above the surface and certainly not beneath it, the officer gave a sharp nod to the soldier standing farthest to the left, a broad-shouldered, tousle-haired twenty-five-year-old. The command was unspoken but clear: step back and jump.
The young man didn’t hesitate. One final breath filled his lungs as he stepped off the ledge and dropped like a stone into the water, hands tied behind his back. The pool closed over him in an instant. Cold. Heavy. Silent. Almost three meters deep. No air, no grip, no control. Just weight. The seconds stretched as the pressure clamped down on his ears, and the water blurred his vision. Then, without warning, his feet struck solid tile. In an instant, instinct took over. He bent low, coiled tight, and exploded upward in one fluid motion. His body shot through the water like a loaded spring let loose and broke the surface. Just once, he gasped, barely a second and a half to live. Then he was gone again. Falling back into the abyss.
As the exercise went on, for minutes, uninterrupted, each descent brought with it a pulse of panic. The helplessness of being bound. The instinct to swim, followed by the crushing realization that he could not. Still, each return to the surface, gasping for air, clawed back a little ground. Fear dulled. Focus sharpened, even if the stillness lasted only for a moment. The emotions moved like a yo-yo. One moment, they snapped outward with full force, unleashing panic. The next, they recoiled inward. Calm. Control. I’ve got this. I’m not giving in!
Then came the final ascent. The officer stepped forward without warning or signal and gave a subtle nod. It was over. As he climbed out, water streaming from his skin and wrists newly freed, the panic vanished like a wave crashing against the hard edge of the pool. Relieved, he took his place beside it, no longer a trainee but a silent sentinel, ready to watch his brothers face the same abyss.
Many years ago, a close friend of mine described this very exercise to me, one commonly used in elite units tied to naval warfare. Beyond the setup itself, what he shared were the feelings it evoked: before, during, and after. Most of all, the panic. A kind of raw, unrelenting panic that struck them as soon as they stepped off the edge and plunged into the water. To be bound and forced into deep water, to lose control while feeling utterly helpless in a potentially fatal situation, triggers a primal terror, one that rarely lets go until you’re back on dry land at a safe distance from the pool
And that, in essence, is what emotions are all about. At their core, they are not here to make us happy or balanced; they are designed to protect us, to steer us toward survival, safety, and security. Especially the so-called “negative” ones: anxiety, fear, and dread. Sadly, we tend to forget this. In daily life, most of us view anxiety, dread, and fear as problems, even as signs of mental illness, as if something is broken within us. Something to be silenced.
But it is precisely because of our highly evolved emotional systems that you and I stand here today. Emotions are messengers, sometimes even commands, urging us to act in ways that keep us alive. Just like hunger prompts us to find food, and cold drives us to seek warmth or shelter, upset and anger push us to set boundaries, to stand up for ourselves, and to fight back, whether with words or even fists.
On a poetic or evolutionary level, emotions are whispers of ancestral wisdom — distilled knowledge of the world, passed down through flesh and blood. Biologically, especially when it comes to fear, anxiety, and dread, emotions often manifest as bodily reactions: the release of stress hormones, a racing heart, rapid breath, tense shoulders, a knot in the gut, and rising blood pressure.
Psychologically, I would argue that emotions are mental phenomena, distinct and incomparable to any other type of experience. And yet, they are always with us, rarely on their own. More often, they are blended like colors on a palette, tinting everything we perceive. It is as if our feelings never leave us. Every moment is stained by something, no matter how faint.
Cognitively, emotions almost always wrap themselves around our thoughts, blending and resonating like chords beneath a melody. One provides the tone, the other the tune — together forming a single emotional experience that cannot be pulled apart without losing its meaning. One part of me feels afraid. Another part thinks, “If I jump into the pool, backward, hands tied, I’ll die.”
Regardless of perspective or level of analysis, emotions should be viewed as functional, a helping hand, even if they don’t always feel that way. Anxiety, for instance, is often compared to a smoke detector: a device that emits a loud signal when it senses something potentially dangerous. And in many ways, it’s a brilliant metaphor. Like anxiety, the smoke detector “sees” into the future. It doesn’t live in the present — it anticipates, imagines, forecasts something that might be about to happen in thirty seconds, or ten minutes. But it’s not here yet.
Anxiety operates in much the same way. Deep within the brain, rapid-fire threat detection and risk analysis is constantly underway, often in neural circuits where a small almond-shaped structure, the amygdala, plays a central role. Some of these calculations trigger an alarm: anxiety. And that signal, at its core, is meant to help us avoid danger — something that may happen not now but in ten minutes, a few weeks, or even ten years. These mental fire drills cover everything from missing a flight, stepping on a snake in the woods, a loved one getting hit by a car, a looming exam, to climate-related dread.
However, the problem with both smoke detectors and anxiety is that they’re designed and calibrated to be highly sensitive. Even the smallest perceived threat can trigger the entire system. Toast, sizzling bacon, pancakes, steam from the dishwasher—any of these can set off a kitchen alarm. And for many people, anxiety functions in exactly the same way. It doesn’t take more than an upcoming test, a work meeting, a plane trip, public speaking, or baking for a birthday party to sound the internal alarm. In other words, sensitivity outweighs specificity.
But unlike a smoke detector, which is cheap and relatively easy to silence—often requiring nothing more than pulling the battery—anxiety doesn’t shut off so easily. Our biological alarm can ring for hours, days, or even through the night, sometimes impossible to unplug. And this difficulty, the very challenge of shutting off the alarm, has over the last century fueled a massive, ever-growing billion-dollar industry. On one side stand pharmaceutical companies, psychologists, therapists, and counselors equipped with evidence-based methods and medications, ready to address the problem by calibrating and silencing the alarm. On the other hand, a swarm of self-proclaimed experts and coaches has emerged, spreading across social media like weeds, often offering simplistic or poorly tailored advice, which sometimes ends up making things significantly worse. Despite this, these are often the individuals we see on screens and stages, delivering piece after piece of advice. Some have even authored books—without a single reference to any study or recognized form of treatment. Just hollow punch lines with no foundation in evidence.
Even if we, as humans, rarely say it outright, many of those who seek help for psychological distress are, in essence, wishing for the same thing: to switch off the inner alarm. To silence the chaos, the anxiety, the spinning thoughts. That pain, that constant hum beneath the surface that disturbs, distracts, and weighs down.
In psychological terms, this attempt to quiet the internal system, or at least to soften its impact, is often referred to as affect regulation. Broadly speaking, there are two forms of affect regulation. The first is proactive, aimed at reducing the sensitivity of the internal alarm so that it doesn’t go off at the slightest provocation. This is where terms like resilience and psychological robustness often come into play. The second is reactive. It is the kind used when the alarm has already gone off, focusing on reducing the volume of the signal or, in the best case, switching it off entirely.
Returning for a moment to the underwater training of elite military units, most participants admit that the alarm never truly shuts off until they’re back on dry land, safely removed from the water. Only then does the panic subside. Only then is the danger gone. However, in real life, anxiety doesn’t vanish so easily. For those who lie awake with climate anxiety, there’s no poolside to return to. Nor is there an escape for those who are anxious due to school bullying, workplace harassment, a fear of war, pandemics, or any number of modern threats. The very idea of these dangers lingers as looming risks. Often, just the possibility of something happening is enough to activate the brain’s alarm system, primarily the amygdala, which then sends out a distress signal. That signal becomes anxiety, an unpleasant, sticky experience that clings to us for hours, days, or even longer.
To cope, most people, whether knowingly or not, try to regulate their emotions through inner dialogue. Sometimes in words, sometimes in images, or in some other mental language, they attempt to reassure themselves that the looming disaster is either not real or at least not as bad as the brain is making it out to be. Sometimes they turn to someone else for reassurance, someone who tells them the danger isn’t real or not as severe as it seems. This process is known as reassurance or falsification.
Children might ask their parents to check the closet for ghosts as a form of reassurance. Adults, on the other hand, might turn to central banks for reassurance that interest rates won’t spike so high that loans become unpayable. Others turn to concrete action. They make plans: A, B, sometimes even C, not just to prepare but to soothe the anxiety itself. In the face of climate anxiety, a person might think, “If sea levels rise, I can always move to higher ground.” A student, fearing failure, might reassure themselves: “If I fail the exam, I’ll just retake it next month.” Ultimately, it’s about building lifelines.
In other cases, people tend to avoid their emotions by shifting focus — filling their minds with work, problems, or something entirely unrelated, as a way to distract themselves from the internal alarm. The list of affect regulation strategies is, of course, endless. Imagination is the only real limit to how we regulate our emotions.
Still, most affect regulation strategies can be plotted along two dimensions, as shown in the following image. The x-axis represents whether the strategy brings about negative consequences or not, while the y-axis reflects how effective the strategy is in regulating distress.
Take alcohol, for example. As an emotional regulation tool, it often lands in the upper right quadrant. It’s effective in the short term; it dulls the edge of discomfort and creates a sense of calm. But it also comes with a host of consequences: impaired health, poor sleep, hangovers, damage to the liver. For that reason, alcohol is never recommended as a viable regulation strategy, even though it often functions that way in practice. Many different illegal street drugs also tend to fall into the upper-right corner.
Talking to a trusted friend, on the other hand, someone willing to listen and reassure you that the perceived danger isn’t likely or not as catastrophic as it feels, can also have a calming effect. But unlike alcohol, this strategy comes with little to no negative consequence. Then there’s avoidance, like skipping a party because the thought of going fills you with dread. This, too, functions as regulation, but it may carry long-term costs: reduced social contact, a creeping sense of isolation, or even loss of joy in life. Personally, I find that dark chocolate, coffee, diet sodas, or even music can serve as alternatives—not particularly effective, but also not associated with any significant negative consequences, at least in small amounts.
The graph is, to some extent, arbitrary. Avoidance does not necessarily come with negative consequences, and there is variation between individuals.
Taken together, most strategies fall into a matrix:
- Effective vs. Ineffective
- Few or no consequences vs. Clear and tangible downsides
In therapy, these dimensions are often brought to light. Clinicians and clients talk about how a person copes, how well it works, and at what price, both in the short term and in the long term.
Sadly, not all anxiety stems from imagined future threats or cognitive forecasts gone awry in the amygdala. Some of it is rooted in the body, in biochemical mechanisms that most people (and sadly, many clinicians) aren’t fully aware of.
Take chronic hyperventilation, for example. It’s not uncommon among people dealing with stress, whether it comes from work, relationships, parenthood, or life in general. Over time, their breathing pattern may subtly shift, becoming slightly faster and shallower, which leads to poor oxygen exchange. This condition is nearly impossible to detect, but the brain doesn’t care. It reads the altered blood chemistry as a threat. And once again, the alarm sounds: anxiety.
In cases like this, there’s no disaster to reason through, no future event to challenge intellectually. The anxiety is simply there — especially in the mornings — a lingering discomfort in the body, day after day, month after month, with no clear explanation. The brain doesn’t report why the alarm is ringing. It only reports that it is. Something’s wrong… but I don’t know what.
In much the same way, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) can contribute to sudden and unexplained feelings of anxiety. When stomach acid flows upward past the lower esophageal sphincter and enters the esophagus, or in some cases even the upper airway, it can irritate the vagus nerve or nearby sensory receptors involved in breathing and autonomic regulation. This irritation activates neural pathways linked to perceived threat or suffocation, which in turn may trigger an anxiety response. Importantly, this process bypasses conscious reasoning. There is no cognitive threat, no story, no forecast. The anxiety simply arises as a fully formed emotional and physiological experience without any clear intellectual explanation.
Hypoglycemia, that is, low blood sugar, operates along similar lines. By increasing the secretion of cortisol and adrenaline, the body is thrown into a state of sweating and trembling — physiological signals that activate networks inside the amygdala without the person necessarily interpreting anything consciously. The same goes for disruptions in the gut–brain axis (such as those caused by changes in the gut microbiome), histamine intolerance, and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) — all of which can trigger anxiety without the individual being aware of what has caused the signal or why it was set off.
Imagine you’ve just moved into a new house, and suddenly the smoke alarm starts blaring. To your surprise, there’s no toast in the toaster, no frying pan on the stove, the kitchen is dark and cold — and yet, the alarm continues to go off. Again and again. For no apparent reason. That is roughly how biochemical anxiety functions: it lacks any clear, immediate explanation.
Individuals who belong to this group, those who suffer from so-called ‘unexplained’ anxiety, are often questioned in detail about their feelings, whether they’re seeing a psychologist or a physician. They’re asked things like, ‘What are you worried about? What’s going on in your life?’ Or: ‘What’s scaring you? What are you afraid of?’ But they can rarely give a coherent answer. They simply don’t know why they feel anxious. They just wake up with the sensation in their body, day after day, without any reasonable explanation.
If this set of symptoms resonates with you, if you wake up feeling anxious without knowing why, and medical tests have failed to provide answers, you might consider approaching the problem the way seasoned clinicians often do: by working systematically, testing one hypothesis at a time. Start by looking at common contributors like sleep, breathing patterns, diet, medication, or stress levels. Choose one area to focus on, make a small change, and observe what happens over the next few days. If nothing shifts, let that idea go and move on to the next. It’s much like food mapping for IBS—rarely is there a quick answer, but progress tends to emerge through careful exploration. Stay curious and flexible in the process. What works for one person might not work for another, but with enough patience and attention, it’s often possible to find something that helps. And be aware: when a person experiences unexplained anxiety, the brain tends to invent causes. It’s as if the mind insists on finding a match—some explanation, any explanation—to make sense of the internal alarm. This reflex is rooted in the brain’s deep need for coherence. It doesn’t like ambiguity, especially not when it comes to potential threats. So it starts scanning: Was it something I said yesterday? Did I offend someone? Did I forget something important?
This tendency, though understandable, can lead us down long and winding paths—into overthinking, unnecessary guilt, or even false memories. The anxiety may have originated from something as simple as poor sleep, a blood sugar dip, or a post-alcohol chemical imbalance. But instead of recognizing it as a bodily signal, we wrap it in story. In other words, our gut feeling isn’t always reliable when it comes to anxiety without a clear source. What feels true in the moment may be little more than the brain’s best guess, dressed up as certainty.
When it comes to interpreted anxiety, that is, the kind of anxiety that arises from risk analysis inside the amygdala, many psychologists and therapists work to refine, experiment with, and train new affect regulation strategies. One common intervention for this type of interpreted anxiety involves internal visualization — a technique often used in the treatment of social anxiety.
Begin by closing your eyes and picturing yourself inside a courtroom. Visualize it clearly—the vaulted ceiling, the wooden benches, the judge seated at the center. On one side of the courtroom sits the prosecutor: sharp, articulate, and unyielding. On the other side stands the defense. That’s you.
Your job is to take on the role of the defender and advocate for yourself. The prosecutor represents the anxiety-driven part of your brain—often personified as the amygdala—an inner voice filled with accusations, predictions, and condemnation.
“You’re going to humiliate yourself,” it says.
“Everyone will think you’re strange.”
It speaks with confidence, but without sources. It presents worry as fact.
Your task is to respond to each claim with precision—not with emotion, not with counter-panic, but with cool, forensic logic. Practice answering with specificity. Ask for evidence. Names. Dates. Concrete examples.
“Exactly who is going to stare at me?”
“What, specifically, are they going to say?”
“When has this happened before—and what was the actual outcome?”
By demanding detail, you corner the fear-driven part of your brain. Its sweeping statements begin to fall apart under scrutiny. What once felt like truth starts to show its cracks.
Many people notice that their anxiety begins to loosen its grip as the courtroom fills with clarity. What was vague gains contour. What was threatening gains proportion. The body follows: heart rate slows, breathing settles. To conclude the exercise, picture the judge—your higher self—summarizing the case. They declare that the burden of proof has not been met. The fear may still be present, but it no longer rules unchecked. It’s been challenged. And you’ve shown up to defend yourself.
Beyond this kind of strategy, there are other approaches as well, such as accepting the presence of anxiety or cutting off its triggers before they have time to truly detonate. A clear example of this is Metacognitive Therapy (MCT), where the focus is not on the content of thoughts, what one thinks, but on one’s relationship to thoughts. The aim is to reduce the repetitive worrying, ruminating, and monitoring that so often fuel anxiety. In MCT, these mental habits are seen as a kind of internal fuel; it is not the catastrophe-thought itself that sustains anxiety, but the time and attention we give it. Instead of examining the logic of the thought, individuals are trained to let the thought be, without stepping into it. It is a bit like noticing the smoke alarm going off without running through the house looking for a fire every single time.
Here’s an example of how metacognitive therapy works in practice. When a distressing or catastrophic thought shows up, begin by noticing it. Don’t push it away, and don’t argue with it. Just see it for what it is – a thought, not a fact.
Say to yourself, “This is just a thought.”
Then, gently bring your attention back to what you were doing. It might be your breath, your surroundings, or the task in front of you. Don’t try to analyze the thought or replace it with a better one. Your goal isn’t to win a debate. Instead, you’re training your mind to stop feeding the thought with energy and attention. Every time you let the thought pass without engaging, you take away a bit of its power. Over time, this new way of relating to your inner world can reduce both the intensity and frequency of anxiety.
However, beyond these strategies, it is also justified to examine the root cause of the anxiety, whether it stems from a perceived or interpreted threat (via risk analysis) or from a biochemical mechanism. The purpose is simply to create clarity in your story: What is the trigger? What behavior follows? And what is the result? In other words, to clearly identify what sets the whole thing in motion and what the current regulation strategies actually accomplish. What is the cost of these strategies—and how effective are they, truly?
This brings us to a critical tension: Affect regulation, while often well-intentioned, can sometimes reinforce anxiety—and over time, diminish quality of life. This is particularly true when patients begin to avoid situations that trigger the emotion, or allow the emotion to steer their actions in such a way that other parts of life begin to suffer.
Let’s take social anxiety as an example. In these cases, anxiety often arises in connection with social interaction, or even the anticipation of it, such as an invitation to a party, dining out, giving a speech, or delivering a presentation. The anxiety is tied to a particular type of situation. One common affect regulation strategy in social anxiety is to reduce the discomfort by avoiding such events entirely. When avoidance isn’t possible, the person may shrink within the moment—avoiding eye contact, speaking softly, or holding back jokes and spontaneous comments. Caution becomes a kind of shield, especially when the situation cannot be escaped. After a social interaction has taken place, it is also common for the individual to ruminate about their behavior, replaying the event in their mind as a way to reassure themselves and manage lingering anxiety.
Moreover, due to social anxiety, it is not uncommon for individuals to articulate specific catastrophic predictions. For example:
“If I speak loudly, everyone will stare and think I’m an idiot,” or,
“If I look someone in the eye while we’re talking, they’ll think I’m weird or too intense.”
Sadly, in many of these cases, avoidance or extreme caution may ultimately be ineffective or even counterproductive as a means of regulation. In exchange for slightly reduced anxiety—or at least a more predictable and tolerable level of it—the individual is stripped of valuable social interaction (a deeply human need), of possible promotions, or of important life encounters: a chance to meet a partner, to be seen, to be offered something new. Even though alcohol, avoidance, and at times excessive caution may not carry the same immediate negative consequences, it remains essential to highlight the link between avoidance and long-term costs. Avoiding and being overly cautious comes at a price—a price that, sooner or later, must be paid. So the question is: are you ready to pay the price—just to stay out of anxiety?
In cases where the individual can no longer bear to pay the price just to avoid experiencing anxiety, many clinicians approach the situation in much the same way as by the poolside. Through controlled experiments, often referred to as exposure therapy, the patient gradually, step by step, expands their freedom of movement, by entering an anxiety inducing situation, which often results in reduced anxiety and fewer catastrophic predictions over time. Metaphorically speaking, the patient dives headfirst into the pool without avoiding any part of it. The aim of therapy, in this sense, is to lower the sensitivity of the internal smoke detector. Over time, this opens the door to new encounters and experiences.
Attending a party, dining at a busy restaurant, or giving a speech, of course, differs significantly from stepping backward into a deep pool with your hands tied behind your back. At a party, no doctor is required to stand by, ready to intervene if something goes wrong. Nor are divers or specialists needed in the bathtub. In other words, some situations are harmless and pose little or no real risk—while others, like mountain climbing, deep-sea diving, or cave exploration, carry more inherent danger. Simply put, our experience of anxiety rarely reflects how dangerous something actually is.
In addition to affect regulation and exposure, I strongly recommend incorporating proactive strategies to strengthen resilience. This is often an underrated approach—frequently downplayed, likely because it demands consistent effort and long-term commitment. These methods typically involve behavioral adjustments and are not primarily designed to protect the individual from anxiety itself. Rather, their purpose is to reduce the sensitivity of the internal alarm system. By lowering its sensitivity, the warning system becomes less likely to activate in response to minor stimuli. This process is often described as a form of calibration, adjusting the system to better match the reality most people live in—a relatively safe environment that rarely calls for an overly sensitive alarm.
Here are some examples:
- Prioritize quality sleep
Give your brain a chance to reset each night. Good sleep helps regulate your emotional responses, calms the amygdala, and lowers your brain’s tendency to overreact. Without enough sleep, even small stressors can feel overwhelming. Make rest non-negotiable—it’s your daily reset button. - Move your body regularly
Engage in aerobic activities like running, swimming, or cycling. These increase serotonin and GABA, balance your stress hormones, and build up the brain’s emotional regulation center. Regular exercise doesn’t just make you stronger—it makes fear weaker. - Practice stillness and breath control
Carve out time for mindfulness or breathing exercises. These practices quiet the mind’s background noise and teach you to sit with discomfort without reacting. Instead of reaching for the extinguisher at the first sign of fire, you learn to pause, assess, and breathe. - Eat to support your brain
Fuel yourself with balanced, anti-inflammatory foods. Stable blood sugar and good nutrition lower your body’s stress signals and improve brain chemistry. You’ll think more clearly, feel more stable, and stop mistaking hunger or fatigue for danger. - Strengthen your support system
Spend time with people who make you feel safe and seen. Human connection soothes the nervous system, lowers threat sensitivity, and helps you regulate emotions. Think of a trusted friend as your emotional co-pilot—someone who can help steer when the alarm starts ringing. - Challenge your mind
Keep learning. Read, solve problems, take on new projects. Mental stimulation builds new neural pathways and increases your brain’s ability to interpret situations accurately. A sharp mind is less likely to see shadows where there are none. - Reconnect with nature
Step outside, walk through a park, or sit by water. Natural settings reduce physiological stress, slow your heart rate, and help your cognitive system recover. Nature is a built-in regulator that helps you step away from artificial stress and reset your alarm. - Reflect and write
Grab a notebook and put your thoughts into words. Writing helps you clarify, calm, and create distance from worry. You begin to see which alarms are real—and which are false alerts. It’s like reading the system log before hitting the panic button.
Note:
The content of this article is general in nature and not intended to replace individual medical assessment. All advice and descriptions are based on science and clinical experience, but should be regarded as educational material — not as individual treatment.
The pool exercise described in this post should only be conducted with proper knowledge and strict safety protocols in place, and never outside elite military units with specialized marine training.
