Do you feel stressed out much of the time?
A persistent state of anxiety or worry can have lasting effects on your mental health and impacts every aspect of your life.
Anxiety is more than just temporary worries or fears. Anxiety disorders do not go away but can get easier to handle over time with help.
You may be experiencing constant worry, overwhelming stress, burned out, increased heart rate, difficulty catching your breath, persistent tension in your neck, shoulders, or back.
This can lead to irritability in communication at home or work, worries about rejection, feeling judged by others, trouble sleeping, or outbursts of emotion like anger or sadness.
Anxiety treatment can guide you through your challenges, teach you how to receive stress and anxiety with coping skills, exercises, and meditation.
You will learn to identify your anxiety triggers to decrease their impact in all areas of your life.
We will explore your thoughts, feelings, and how they lead to your behaviors. You can change the way you think about yourself.
Anxiety is a part of our built in Fight-or-Flight system but it was not intended to stay active all of the time. Constant anxiety wears down your defenses, both emotional and physical, leaving your body and mind less responsive than it could be.
About Anxiety
Anxiety is the number one disorder diagnosed in the world. In the United States the prevalence is 18% (as of 2020) and worldwide it stands at 1 in 13 people, according to the World Health Organization.
Anxiety is an emotion, one we can feel. This emotion activates your sympathetic nervous system, the threat system, which sends you into fight, flight, or freeze mode. You’ll feel physical symptoms in response; heart racing, trouble breathing, face flushing, sweats, and the inability to sit still. What you won’t see, but will certainly feel, is the lockdown on your brain. While simultaneously making it difficult to focus, concentrate or make a decision, your thoughts go into overdrive.
The physical symptoms of anxiety can include: diarrhea, dizziness, palpitations, restlessness, tingling in the hands and feet, tremors, upset stomach, and urinary changes (having to go more or less, or not being able to go).
Anxiety and fear are both signals to alert you to a threat. Anxiety can be conceptualized as a normal and adaptive response that has lifesaving qualities and warning of threats of bodily damage, pain, helplessness, possible punishment, or the frustration of social or body needs like a separation from loved ones, or a menace to success or status, and threats to physical safety. It’s a problem when it doesn’t turn off.
It’s designed to force a response to the threat or lessen the consequences. This is accompanies by increased somatic (body) and autonomic (nervous system) activity. Anxiety prevents damage by alerting the person to carry out certain acts that avoid the danger.
Ways to Describe Anxiety:
- You put a child’s dinosaur toy in the closet and anxiety has Godzilla in there by dinner.
- Like having 15 browser windows open in your mind at the same time and you’re afraid to look away or you’ll miss an update.
- Getting to a crossroads decision and deciding that standing still guarantees you won’t make the wrong choice, so you don’t make any choice.
- Anxiety waits until you are about to fall asleep when distractions are diminished and the thoughts that have been pushed aside all day to get out microphones and begin to shout.
Anxiety Symptoms from a Diagnostic Point of View
- Excessive and/or unrealistic worry that is difficult to control occurring more days than not for at least 6 months – about a number of events/topics or activities.
- Motor Tension (restlessness, tiredness, shaky, muscle tension, TMJ, teeth grinding, upper back/neck pain)
- Autonomic hyperactivity (heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dry mouth, trouble swallowing, nausea, diarrhea)
- Hypervigilance (feeling constantly on edge, experiences concentration difficulties, having trouble falling or staying asleep, irritable)
*Note that the Hypervigilant section also applies to PTSD which is why they can ‘feel the same.’
Types Of Anxiety Disorders
There are many types of anxiety disorders, each with different symptoms. The most common types of anxiety disorders include:
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
GAD produces chronic, exaggerated worrying about everyday life. This worrying can consume hours each day, making it hard to concentrate or finish daily tasks. A person with GAD may become exhausted by worry and experience headaches, tension or nausea.
Social Anxiety Disorder
More than shyness, this disorder causes intense fear about social interaction, often driven by irrational worries about humiliation (e.g. saying something stupid or not knowing what to say). Someone with social anxiety disorder may not take part in conversations, contribute to class discussions or offer their ideas, and may become isolated. Panic attacks are a common reaction to anticipated or forced social interaction.
Panic Disorder
This disorder is characterized by panic attacks and sudden feelings of terror sometimes striking repeatedly and without warning. Often mistaken for a heart attack, a panic attack causes powerful physical symptoms including chest pain, heart palpitations, dizziness, shortness of breath and stomach upset. Many people will go to desperate measures to avoid an attack, including social isolation.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
OCD includes a wide range of symptoms that includes intrusive thoughts, rituals, preoccupations, and compulsions. The obsessions or compulsions cause severe distress, are time consuming and significantly interfere with a normal routine, ability to function at work or school, social situations, or relationships.
Phobias
We all tend to avoid certain things or situations that make us uncomfortable or even fearful. But for someone with a phobia, certain places, events or objects create powerful reactions of strong, irrational fear. Most people with specific phobias have several things that can trigger those reactions; to avoid panic, they will work hard to avoid their triggers. Depending on the type and number of triggers, attempts to control fear can take over a person’s life.
Other anxiety disorders include:
- Agoraphobia
- Selective mutism
- Separation anxiety disorder
- Substance/medication-induced anxiety disorder, involving intoxication or withdrawal or medication treatment
Here are 2 Meditations I picked just for Anxiety.
Body Scan Meditation
This meditation pulls you out of your head and has you focus on physical sensations. Good for taking a mental breath.
Leaves on a Stream Meditation
I recommend this meditation more than any other for a reason. It has you watching as your thoughts float by on a stream so you can choose which ones you want to give attention to.