When anxiety narrows your world: adaptive or avoidant?
Owning It: The Anxiety Podcast
Caroline Foran
4.4 • 654 Ratings
🗓️ 9 March 2026
⏱️ 52 minutes
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Summary
For this episode I’m speaking to clinical psychologist and author Dr Alexandra Shaker about her book The Narrowing and about how prolonged stress and trauma can constrict not just our nervous systems, but how we experience our lives and how we can identify when our narrowing might need to open up. When we’re anxious, especially chronically anxious, our worlds can begin to shrink. We say no more often. We avoid certain places. We reduce risk. We make life smaller so it feels manageable. I often describe it myself, when I’ve felt anxiety close in on me that I’m “making my world smaller so I could cope with it,” and at the time that felt protective, even necessary. But what happens when that narrowing becomes the default?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for listening to Owning It. If you would like to support the series, the best thing you can do is just tell a friend or better yet share it on social media. |
| 0:08.0 | If you really, really want to support, you can subscribe to me on Substack where I write a weekly column. |
| 0:13.0 | Listeners of the pod get a 20% discount forever at carolineforin.substack.com. |
| 0:18.7 | Thank you. |
| 0:20.1 | Hello, dear listener and welcome back to Owning at the Anxiety podcast with me, Caroline Foran.substack.com. Thank you. Hello, dear listener and welcome back to owning it the |
| 0:22.5 | anxiety podcast with me, Caroline Forin. Today's episode felt so resonant from the moment I came |
| 0:28.9 | across the title of my guest's book. On this podcast, we talk a lot about anxiety as a nervous |
| 0:34.3 | system response, about survival mode, hypervigilance, and what happens when |
| 0:39.0 | we're braced for threat for too long. But something we don't always name is what that state |
| 0:44.2 | does to our lives over time. When we're anxious, especially if that anxiety is chronic, our worlds can |
| 0:51.0 | quietly begin to shrink. We say no more often. We have more boundaries, we avoid certain places, we reduce risk, |
| 0:58.0 | and we make life smaller so that it feels manageable. |
| 1:01.0 | And that is quite an adaptive cope mechanism in some ways. |
| 1:04.0 | I often describe it myself whenever I have felt anxiety closing in on me, |
| 1:08.0 | that I need to, for a short time, make my world smaller so that I can cope with |
| 1:12.0 | it and that feels protective and it feels necessary but what happens when that narrowing becomes |
| 1:16.8 | the default today I'm speaking to clinical psychologist and author Dr. Alexandra Shaker about her book |
| 1:23.4 | The Narrowing and about how prolonged stress and trauma can constrict not just our nervous systems |
| 1:28.4 | but how we experience our lives overall and how we can identify when our narrowing might need to |
| 1:34.0 | open up. Thanks so much for being here and I hope you find this episode helpful. |
| 1:39.4 | Well, Alexandra, welcome to owning it. I'm so glad you're you. Thank you. I'm really delighted to be here. |
| 1:46.0 | For anyone listening who maybe isn't yet familiar with you and they need to get your book the narrowing, |
... |
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