21 metrics to figure why your head won't leave your head alone
Christina Luberto is a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of Cincinnati. She is in D.C. today to present research on a concept called relaxation-induced anxiety (RIA). It is precisely what it sounds like: being relaxed, itself, actually triggers anxiety.
RIA has been mentioned sporadically in medical literature since the 1980s, but never as a diagnosis in itself. Luberto looks at it as a disposition; a maladaptive process. She says about 15 percent of people have experienced it, and it's not outside the realm of benefiting from treatment. So she developed an index to identify exactly what part of relaxation is causing a person's anxiety, which should help inform targeted therapy.
RIA is different from just being the sort of person who doesn't find traditionally relaxing things to be relaxing. If those things (doing yoga, playing harp, brunching with Yanni, etc.) actually make you feel anxious -- but you then feel at ease, say, organizing socks -- that's not RIA. Because you are able to relax, albeit by atypical means. In this model, anything that elicits relaxed physiology (slow heart rate, decreased muscle tone, deep breathing) counts as relaxing.
It's also different from being straight-up unable to ever relax, as in severe chronic anxiety.
In RIA, you are able to relax (by whatever does it for you -- cooking, chilling, vacuuming), but it's not long before the relaxation triggers anxiety. You briefly enter a parasympathetic (chill) state, but then your heart rate spikes, and your respiratory rate increases, and you feel anxious.