Hierarchy of Anxiety

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (1943)

Simply put, Maslow's theory states that all humans need a certain level of basic elements of life before they can progress to the next level.

We need food, water, and shelter, before we can focus on safety and security. Safety and security is necessary for us to focus on friends and belonging. We need to have friends and belonging before we can focus on esteem and respect, and we need a feeling of esteem and respect before we can self-actualize.

We can fall in and out of each of these levels as life circumstances dictate, which explains why we might feel disconnected with friends and family when we're concerned about job loss, being evicted from our home, or the safety and security of our surroundings.

Hierarchy of Anxiety

Taking from the idea of Maslow and Yalom's Givens of Existential Psychotherapy (1980), each level of Maslow's Hierarchy has an attached anxiety. These anxieties can be real or imagined, and we can drop in and out of each anxiety and need as life circumstances occur.

We might have established food, water, and shelter, but we constantly worry about losing it (we fear death). We have established security, but we worry about losing our jobs or the reliability of resources (we fear change). We have friends, family, etc., but we tend to fear isolation, so we conform (we fear loneliness). We feel an appropriate level of esteem, respect, and even a role within our sphere, but we worry about our self-esteem and purpose in life. We may be moving closer to becoming our true selves, but we worry about freedom, responsibility, and too many choices.

Hierarchy of Anxiety and Survival

Building on the previous concepts, I added the category of adaptive and maladaptive survival skills. Adaptive survival skills are the skills we learn and use which brings us to resolution and reduction of anxiety and brings us to a level of stable wellness. Maladaptive survival skills are the skills we learn to reduce anxiety, but which keeps us in the cycle of anxiety and prevent us from reaching stable wellness.

When we experience anxiety, our bodies go into the fight, flight, or freeze reaction. Over time, our bodies learn what works to reduce the tension or threat (real or imagined), and this learned response becomes the deep groove reward wiring in our brains. This wired response is why we often find ourselves repeating maladaptive behaviors despite the harm they may cause and despite the fact that we promised ourselves we stop the behavior.