The first thing to remember about Anxiety is that it is a natural response to our brain’s interpretations of pressure or danger. It can help us with things like: playing a sport, speaking in public or doing an interview. It helps us sharpen our focus. When faced with a new experience or unfamiliar situation, we can also feel some anxiety and stress. Everyone feels anxious from time to time however, anxiety becomes a problem when it starts to dominate and limit our everyday lives, creating internal chaos and turmoil. Our body experiences this anxiety which is dis-proportionate to what is happening. When the anxious feelings don’t retreat it can make life very hard to cope with.
Anxiety and panic attacks can be dismissed by others, as nothing more than feeling stressed or overwhelmed. However, to people suffering from these feelings, they are very real. When experiencing a panic attack, the sensations can even feel life threatening.
Some symptoms of Anxiety: shortness of breath, racing heart, chest pain, trembling, choking feeling, nausea, sweating or suddenly feeling cold, feeling light-headed and dizzy, feelings of numbness or tingling, fear of losing control, feeling detached from your surroundings.
Do you identify with any of these comments?
Having frequent and unexpected experiences of panic, fear, or anxiety? Especially triggered by a regular situation?
Feeling anxious, fearful, or nervous a lot of the time? And these are they beginning to rule how you live your life?
Do you: worry a lot, have trouble concentrating, or have feelings of helplessness?
Do you find some social situations and events difficult? Or are you avoiding locations, public transport, or groups of people, to reduce the possibility of experiencing anxiety or panic?
Do you experience panic attacks that seem to happen out of nowhere? Or are you beginning to worry about having another panic attack, which results in making you feel anxious?
Do you experience any of the symptoms listed above?
As a way of dealing with intense anxious feelings, Anxiety can turn into a disorder, such as:
OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder): Ritual repetitive acts carried out to try and alleviate anxiety, eg: washing hands repeatedly, objects needing to be in a certain order, focusing on safety and checking and re-checking household appliances, or locking doors.
Phobias such as fear of mice, spiders, insects, water, blood or illnesses.
Social Anxiety, fear of spaces, fear of leaving the house, fear of public transport, fear that people are out to get us.
Feelings of anxiety and panic can overwhelm us, when we are faced with these triggering situations. We then try to cope with finding unhelpful behaviours to reduce the intensity of the emotions, such as avoiding these triggers. But this can subsequently cause problems in our daily lives, and can ultimately prolong the experience and result in more despair and frustration.
When anxiety and panic attacks become everyday experiences, it is a signal that something is wrong, and it is time to seek help.
Counselling and Anxiety: Counselling can help by exploring what is emotionally triggering us, and exploring the root cause of it. By finding the cause, we can deal with the present anxiety better, because we have an understanding of where it came from, the past. Keep in mind, that even thinking about the trigger, and the process of seeking counselling can in itself be a cause of further anxiety and panic. Therefore, in the counselling session, we will work gently around the subject, slowing building up to looking at the cause of the anxiety. We can explore what is going on for you, and find the underlying triggers. Counselling can support you in learning to manage and reduce your responses to the triggering situations. Gaining an understanding of the way anxiety works on your body and brain can be empowering. You can calm your nervous system and rewire your anxious brain. Approaches such as CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) can be used to teach you some techniques to remain calm, relaxed and enable you to control your breathing and heart rate. This in turn reduces your cycle of anxiety and fear, and reduces feelings of panic. Learning how to manage and diffuse situations, can make your anxiety more manageable than you might think right now.