Anxiety

Feelings of anxiety – being scared or frightened that something that feels threating might happen – are common and normal.  When these feelings happen though they can be very unpleasant.

Anxiety is a normal bodily response to feeling threatened by something.  The body’s response to anxiety happens because of the physiological changes that need to occur to help us respond to threat, such as run away fast or be prepared to fight back.  Whilst most times we are not in situations which call for us to respond like this, anxiety is still triggered by things that feel threatening to us even if they are not really so.

Symptoms of Anxiety 

Anxiety can show itself in lots of ways – physically, mentally (or emotionally) and behaviourally.  This is because all parts of our bodies can be effected by the physiological changes that occur.

Physical symptoms of anxiety include increased heart rate, needing to breath faster which can lead to being breathless and feeling light-headed or dizzy, and feeling hot and sweaty.  People can also notice that they feel shaky, gets pins and needles, notice chest pains, or feel sick or have stomach ache or cramp.

Our thoughts become focused on feeling anxious and being worried too – the ‘mental’ or emotional symptoms that we can experience.  These are things like worrying about future events or things that happened in the past, or that the worst thing we can imagine might happen (‘catastrophising’).  It can be difficult to concentrate, and our minds can ‘race’ with lots of thoughts running through them, making it hard to relax and feeling nervous or tense.  This can feel worse at night making it hard to sleep.  Some people might find their thoughts become obsessive or that they experience intrusive recollections of past events.  Understandably these experiences can make us feel sad, tearful and worried.

If we are having lots of difficult physical and emotional symptoms it is not surprising our behaviour changes in reaction to these.    The behavioural symptoms of anxiety can be avoiding going out to new places or meeting new people, or avoiding things we used to enjoy or take part in.  Some people might find that their anxiety gets in the way of their relationships with family or friends, or how they manage their job, or looking after themselves.  Sometimes people’s anxiety might be so bad that they develop compulsive behaviours to try to reduce the anxiety.