Nature, Nurture, and Ancient Patterns of Anxiety
If you’ve ever wondered whether anxiety runs in families, I hope to give you some answers in this article. It’s a question I hear often in therapy — and it’s a good one. People sometimes say, “My mum was a worrier” or “My dad was always on edge — maybe I inherited it.” This opens up the old Nature vs Nurture debate: are we born anxious, or do we learn it?
In reality, both nature and nurture play a role — but perhaps not in the way people think. Genetics can increase your sensitivity to anxiety, but how your body and brain respond to stress is largely shaped by experience. In fact, some of the strongest patterns we carry are ancient nervous system habits, formed long before we could think about them — in early childhood, when we were learning how to feel safe.
What Does the Research Say About Genetics and Anxiety?
Scientific studies have looked closely at whether anxiety is inherited through our genes; twin studies suggest that genetics account for a moderate risk for developing an anxiety disorder. That means there’s a genetic predisposition — a biological sensitivity — that may make someone more likely to feel anxious.
However, this is not the same as saying anxiety is “in your DNA” and can’t be changed. Genes influence how your brain and nervous system react to the world, but they don’t determine how you cope with that sensitivity. What matters just as much — and often more — is the environment you’re raised in, especially your early relationships and how your caregivers helped you (or didn’t help you) manage emotions.
That’s where nurture and nervous system learning come in — and that’s where the rest of this article begins. However, regardless of the cause of anxiety, here’s how to get help.
What I Hear in Therapy
When I work with people with anxiety, people often say that one or both of their parents or brothers or sisters are anxious. It makes sense to the person that maybe anxiety is just in their family — it is in the genes.
My concern is that if the person accepts that it is part of the family, there does not appear to be much control for the person to do something about it if they believe it is in their genes.Is anxiety hereditary?
I prefer to think that we can “learn” to be anxious. This gives much more control. If we can learn to be anxious, we can unlearn it.
How can we learn anxiety from parents or caregivers?
A baby’s early experience is crucial to their emotional development and nervous system development. For the point of this article, you can think of the nervous system as a thermostat for what you are feeling.
In an ideal situation, if the baby is crying, they are already distressed and more aroused (stress) from their nervous system. If their parent responds to this distress calmly and meets the child’s needs, the baby will quickly calm down. They will move from distress to calm from high arousal to low arousal. You can think of this as moving from a stress response to a relaxation response.
If the baby is crying in another situation and the parent is feeling under pressure and stress, the baby may pick up on this. The parent, doing their best, may pick up the baby but pace up and down quickly or bounce the baby on their knee with too much gusto. Rather than calm the child, the arousal might increase – they may feel more stress before they feel calm.
Over time, if this is repeated, the baby will learn distress means slightly more distress. Their nervous system will adapt to their environment. You can think of this crudely as stress is met with more stress.
What does this mean for us as adults?
The chances are the adult may have difficulty helpfully responding to stress. They may feel more arousal in their body than is necessary. Stress is met with more stress.
The good news is you can change this.
We now know that we can change how we habitually respond to stress. We can teach ourselves to induce a relaxation response, which induces calm in the body and brain.
This is very important, as some of us must be taught how to regulate our emotions. How to be able to calm ourselves and move quickly from distress to calm – basic self-soothing principles.
What This Means for You
If you’ve grown up in a family where stress and worry were the norm, you may have learned — without even realising it — to respond to the world through the lens of anxiety. But this doesn’t mean you’re stuck with it.
Modern neuroscience shows that the brain and nervous system remain changeable throughout life. You can learn new ways to respond to stress, soothe your body, and gradually rewire the old, anxious patterns that were laid down in early life.
And patterns can be changed.
Want to Go Further?
If this post resonates with you, you might find my course Retrain Your Brain helpful. It teaches you how anxiety forms, how to work with your nervous system (not against it), and how to rebuild a sense of calm and control — even if anxiety has run in your family for years.
