Anxiety
Understanding Your Anxiety - Mental Health & Wellbeing
Anxiety
As with any emotion, anxiety has a function. It alerts us about danger or a threat, its goal is keeping us safe and out of danger. The problem is that sometimes our brain is not particularly good at judging if the threat is real or if it is just a thought, and how big or small it may be.
Anxiety generates uncomfortable feelings as tension, worried thoughts, fear, avoidance, feeling that you cannot do certain things, physical symptoms like sweating, raised heartbeat, etc. If you are having difficulties with anxiety a psychologist can help you to overcome it and function well again.
Anxiety is a normal reaction to certain situations like sitting an exam, starting a new job, having to make a decision that will impact your future, moving to a different place, or having a baby. Sometimes, even if anxiety is a normal reaction it could get out of control, the problem starts when what you are experiencing impact on your ability to live and enjoy your life.
Anxiety may be a problem if:
- Anxiety is preventing you from engaging in activities that form part of your everyday life.
- You have experienced anxiety for long time, or for longer that you would like.
- You or other people close to you think that your reactions are out of proportion to the situation that you are experiencing.
Anxiety has been described as the main symptom of several conditions, including panic attacks, phobias, generalize anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and social anxiety. All these conditions have in common the excessive and disproportionated worry, sometimes to something that you can point and acknowledge, sometimes it is hard or impossible to identify what is triggering the worry.
Other symptoms
of anxiety
disorders are:
- Fear that you might be going crazy.
- Fear that you might fail
- Experience physical symptoms without a medical explanation.
- Sensation that you are going to have a heart attack, or you will not be able to breathe, leading you to call the emergency services or attending to A&E.
- You feel constant worry, which you cannot stop.
- Sleeping problems.
- Nightmares.
- Flashbacks.
- Feeling frozen or unable to react.
- Feeling claustrophobic.
This list is only some of symptoms that people can describe when they experience anxiety.
Anxiety could be cause by many different factors: biological, social and psychological. Regardless of the trigger of anxiety for you, a psychologist, counsellor or therapist can help you to take control of your symptoms, you can learn strategies to deal with them more efficiently and function better in life without the interference of anxiety. During therapy you can also explore the reasons why you have been experiencing anxiety to find the root cause and work around it.