When anxiety rears up, reach for one of these...

If you suffer from problematic anxiety, some relief might come from the Hot Cross Bun model. Alongside a deeper exploration of your anxiety's origin, it can be a useful tool.

Anxiety is more than just a passing worry—it’s a persistent companion for far too many of us. Whether it’s the tight knot in your chest before a daunting task, the unshakeable dread of a restless night, or the sudden, searing rush of worry from what seems like nowhere—anxiety can feel omnipresent.

In a world that relentlessly demands our attention with notifications, deadlines, unsettling news from many directions, anxiety finds abundant fuel. And if our own lives contain a history of powerful uncertainty, rejection, pain, or loneliness these moments may have planted deep-rooted patterns that still echo today. Emotional reflexes, automatic physical responses, resistant thought patterns: these can be the ghosts of what once happened. The world we now live in can amplifies those echoes, stirring them to life with the slightest trigger, even if that trigger doesn't seem to have any bearing on the original events.

One reason why anxious responses of old can keep recurring can be the fact the body has a kind of built–in 'smoke alarm'. It lives within part of our nervous system (the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) to be precise) and it was forged in the furnace of our earliest survival needs; designed to protect us by sending us into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses in the face of threat.

In safe times, this system is balanced by the parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS)—the soothing branch that invites rest, digestion, repair, and restoration. Ideally, the two work together, like accelerator and brake.

But when the SNS misfires—when the smoke alarm starts going off at the merest hint of a breeze—we can be catapulted into survival mode even when there’s no fire. A WhatsApp message pings, a seemingly harmless thought pops up, a comment is made, or an intrusive memory surfaces—and suddenly your body reacts as though you’re in the lion’s den. Even when the objective threat is absent, your body can still respond as though the danger is undeniably real.

There are in fact neurological reasons why that might be happening - to do with how difficult or traumatic memories from the past aren’t properly time-coded in key parts of the brain. It can mean that when an unrelated, though seemingly manageable stressor occurs in the present, the system lights up as if it was shouting “Oh my God, it’s happening again!”

As anyone who suffers badly from it will tell you, anxiety can feel truly disabling—it hijacks your nervous system before you even have a chance to think. Before you can get your rational brain online, the SNS has grabbed the controls of your feelings, thoughts and body and is swerving all over the road, telling you to run, fight, just freeze or even fawn to the source of the stress - if it’s a person - to make it all go away.

As an Integrative psychotherapist, my work is not about holding up one single model of therapy as 'the answer.' Instead, I work to find approaches that resonate with my clients—the ones that speak to who they are, what they’re experiencing, and what feels possible in the moment.

Different models bring different strengths. When it comes to calming anxiety in the moment Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) has much to offer. It gives us tools for breaking anxiety’s spirals and regaining a sense of agency. One of its most useful tools is the Hot Cross Bun model.

The Hot Cross Bun Model

The Hot Cross Bun model - part of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

The Hot Cross Bun* model is simple but powerful. It shows how four parts of our experience are constantly interacting:

• Thoughts

• Emotions

• Physical feelings

• Behaviours

  
  

These aren’t separate parts. They feed into each other, often so quickly it feels instantaneous.

Imagine this:

A thought (“I can’t cope with this!”) triggers...

A physical feeling (tight chest, racing heart), which intensifies...

An emotion (fear, dread), which drives...

A behaviour (evade the whole thing, retreat, panic – or rage, and attack).

Or this:

An emotion (dread, unease) triggers...

A physical feeling (sick, shallow breathing, racing pulse), which prompts...

A behaviour (rushing home, ringing the emergency services)

A thought (“What’s wrong with me? Am I having a heart attack!? Where’s that ambulance!?”)

Or this:

A behaviour (skipping that party tonight) triggers...

A thought (“I’m such a loser, I should have gone, I always do this kind of thing.”), prompting...

An emotion (hopelessness, shame) which drives...

A physical feeling (tired, drained). Or this:

A physical feeling (stomach drop, sick feeling, heart pounding) leading to...

An emotion (fear, panic) which activates...

A thought ("On no, this is just like that time before when things went wrong...") followed by...

A behaviour (avoid the situation, get out). The cycle, which can start from and then flow throw any of the four elements in its own unique sequence, keeps feeding itself. Once it's charged through all four, it can cycle back into the sequence again, intensifying. Each element reinforces the others, and soon the whole system is swept away in a self-sustaining, whirlwind of anxiety. The speed of all this can be an overwhelming feature of it. So the earlier we catch it, the more chance we have of using what we might call a mental firebreak - something that interrupts the cascade before it sweeps through the whole system.

Breaking the Flow

In CBT, the emphasis is often placed on thoughts and behaviours. That’s because changing raw feelings directly is difficult—the thinking brain struggles to override the powerful limbic system where emotions live. No matter where it started in the inner system though, if we can step in effectively at the level of thoughts or behaviour, (or if it's something in the body, the thoughts that arise immediately once we become aware of a distressing physical feeling), we’ve got a chance of disrupting the loop.

Doing that involves first mentally trying to step away from the cycle of anxiety. Create a pause. Perhaps imagine you’re in a helicopter looking down on this whole spin-cycle of distress. You’re not in the cycle – you are looking at it. Notice the thoughts you are having (that’s right – you can have thoughts about your thoughts). Gently challenge those thoughts from this standpoint - by questioning if they’re fully accurate, or by gently reframing them. If you can mentally step away a little, you have a chance of breaking the spiral. Force the system to slow down. It might take a bit of practice, but it can be done.

Changing behaviour can be powerful too. Simply doing something different can reset the entire system, stimulating new thoughts, fresh feelings, and calmer bodily responses. For example, going for a short walk, reaching out to someone you trust, even deliberately and consciously doing something unrelated in the moment, without reflecting on it. Wash the kitchen floor. Repot that plant. Brush the dog. Whatever.

As you are focusing on stepping back from the automatic thoughts that are running riot, or introducing different behaviour, enlisting the body to help itself can also be hugely helpful too. Slow, deep breathing will soothe the nervous system with an improved flow of oxygen. Grounding techniques, or simply noticing and relaxing tense muscles can influence both feelings and thoughts, and create more space so that you can continue to mentally pause, pull away and look at what’s going - as if from that helicopter.

The Hot Cross Bun model gives you multiple entry points. Wherever anxiety first shows up, whether in a racing chest, a spiralling thought, a gnawing feeling, or an avoidant behaviour, you can act to prevent the whole cycle from being hijacked.

Morning Dread - anxiety from nowhere

We tend to think of anxiety as something that’s triggered. That’s often true (although some of us may well be wired to feel it more acutely). But sometimes we may have little idea where that trigger came from. Then we’re left trying to make sense of it. A common example is the concept of morning dread' - a hazy, heavy sense of fear that can greet us the moment we open your eyes in the morning, as if from nowhere. It's a horrible, incomprehensible sensation and it may well have nothing really to do with what lies ahead for us that day - something that makes it all the more puzzling.

This feeling could have a number of triggers (none of which we might be easy to identify), including a troubled night’s sleep caused by stresses we’re carrying in daily life. Nightmares, which replay old anxieties or unresolved emotions and kick of bodily reactions whilst we sleep may also play into it.

Or it could also be simply the process of waking up. When we are waking up, the body produces a surge of cortisol and adrenaline - the so-called ‘stress hormones’ - to help us become alert. For most people, this provides just enough energy to start the day. But if our sympathetic nervous system is hypersensitive - if we’ve been chronically anxious or depressed and that smoke alarm is set to go off at the slightest trigger - that hormone rush can set it off. A strange feeling of dread floods through us as we lie there. And next? The brain, always trying to find the meaning of things, searches for reasons. “Why do I feel so frightened? It must be because…”  Soon the anxious thoughts come flooding in.

This is the Hot Cross Bun model in action again. As we wake, we do so with a strangely tightened chest or a hollowness in the stomach. This generates an instant emotion (foreboding or dread), which prompt thoughts (“something’s wrong, something terrible is going to happen”), which shape a behaviour (avoidance) and keeps us in bed. The cycle, in this scenario, starts in the body but then sweeps through the whole system unless interrupted. Not wanting to get up at all is understandable in these terms - it's a kind of flight response (and of course, when we are deeply depressed we may simply not be able to face the world at all - it's more like freeze). But, if you possibly can, get up. Avoid the prospect of lying there perpetuating the cycle and reinforcing negative thoughts, perhaps with further feelings of self-loathing driven by not feeling capable of even getting out of bed? ("I can't even get out of bed, I'm such a loser"). Bodily movement will also help the cortisol and adrenaline disperse and signal that the body doesn’t need an injection of them any more.

The rest of the story

CBT can be very valuable as a therapeutic approach, but in my work I keep in mind that it’s far from the only way in to some of these questions. Anxiety is rarely just a malfunctioning system. Though some of us have inherited a genetic predisposition to it, it usually got started somewhere. To return to the smoke alarm metaphor – when the damned thing is blaring, then all we'll want is some way of turning it off. But at some point it's going to need repairing or it'll likely happen again – we’ll need to take it down and look at what’s gone wrong with it, perhaps even deciding to replace it with an alarm that works properly.

For many people, troublesome anxiety isn’t random. It’s a legacy of unhealed experiences. A time when it wasn’t safe to relax, or a time of trauma or danger.  A period when the world felt overwhelming, and vigilance was vital for survival. It might have been when we were growing up, or to do with some event we went through; part of an early-warning and self-defence system, keeping us safe from serious risk - emotional or physical - that we couldn’t cope with back then.

Seen in this light, anxiety is not an enemy, but a protector that has become overzealous. It continues its vigilance even now, long after the original danger may have passed. So alongside working with managing anxiety in the moment, therapy with my clients usually involves trying to track the anxiety back to its roots to explore what this original response was created for? What’s it still trying to protect you from? This is slower, deeper work. Once we’ve stopped the alarm going off incessantly, it involves listening to anxiety as a messenger rather than fighting it as an enemy. What is it afraid will happen if you lower your guard? What memory or wound is it trying to push you away from in case you can’t cope?

Sometimes, when people begin to explore this, they discover that their anxiety has been guarding a tender place - an unhealed grief, a shame-laden memory, a fear of rejection, or a younger part of themselves that still feels scared. The circumstances that made it arise may be long gone, but the system that emerged to warn you of danger or impending hurt is still out there doing its thing, stuck in the ‘on’ position.

When we combine these approaches - skills to calm anxiety and compassionate exploration to find its roots - we can create the possibility of a new relationship with it. Anxiety may not vanish from our lives, but it doesn’t have to run the show. We can learn to spot its signals early, to interrupt the spirals and begin the longer journey of healing.

******** * If you're not familiar with the Hot Cross Bun, check out their back story here. They're delicious. Jo Shaw is a psychotherapist practicising in Kent and London, UK, both face-to-face and online. She can be reached at jo@jjstherapy.com