What is anxiety? |
Anxiety, worry, and their more extreme sibling panic, are just your system going into survival mode because for some reason (you may not even remember why) you have been triggered into feeling under threat. This could be physical, emotional or mental threat. People who experience anxiety have been exposed to some form of stressful life event that has triggered their brain into doing some things in order to better survive and adapt to challenges. It releases stress chemicals and it attempts to learn how to combat threat in the future. Sometimes phobias can develop which means that we have an extreme fear response to specific things like flying, heights, dogs, clowns, needles and so on. Sometimes we know what caused the phobia, other times we have no idea how it developed.
Anxiety is normal and everyone experiences some anxiety. The problem can come when the anxiety becomes debilitating or takes over and starts to run the show. |
The experience of anxiety |
When experiencing anxiety it means your system (which includes your brain, nervous system, and body) is preparing you to deal with a perceived threat and has gone into survival mode. Your body is flooded with stress hormones and a number of physical reactions are likely to happen:
Once you have been exposed to a stressful life experience or feeling of threat and your body has gone into fight or flight (or if those avenues are cut off, then freeze) your mind then mobilises to increase the likelihood of survival. What this tends to mean is that your mind becomes more focused on paying attention to potential harm in order to “solve the problem”. Humans are great problem solvers. Our mind will go over and over and over something in order to solve it. Sometimes to the point where we can’t seem to think about anything else! We think about it, and we pay attention to whatever we see as relevant to it. We become hypervigilant. This vigilance can be on whatever we have identified as a potential threat. It might be symptoms or sensations within our own body, or it may be how other people seem to be responding to us, or situations where we feel there is a potential to be harmed, embarrassed, or out of control. Like flying in planes, getting cancer, being humiliated and so on. The list is endless. Our imagination is an excellent source of things to worry about. And the more we pay attention to something (e.g. fearful thoughts), the more we notice it, and the more we feel anxious. Once anxiety takes hold the feeling of threat can be triggered by more and more things, as our brain pays more and more attention to potential sources of threat in order to combat them. The problem is that this fuels anxiety even more. For more information on anxiety click here. |
Treating anxiety |
The good news is there are lots of things you can do to treat anxiety to not let it run your life. The first thing can be learning how to calm your body down. Then, learning how to think differently and do things differently. Additionally there may be prior trauma that has contributed to you feeling anxious and that needs to be addressed. Modern life can also be anxiety-provoking depending on your unique circumstances.
Treatment is step by step and gentle, though facing what we fear will always be a bit scary at first. However you can take heart in knowing that many many people just like you have overcome their anxiety and are living full, rich and meaningful lives. |