What is Anxiety? |
What is Anxiety? |
Anxiety
Anxiety looks and feels different for different people. It can be:
- Racing, circular or looping thoughts
- Discomfort being in your own skin
- Catastrophic thinking
- Fixation on future events or potential losses
- Fixation on something that feels off, incomplete or wrong
- Rumination over something that happened in the past
- Self-judgment or shame over the way you behaved in a past situation
- Continual rehearsing of a future situation
- Tightness or stabbing in your chest
- Sinking weak feeling in your gut or knees
- Light headed floating feeling
- Tingling in your hands or feet
- Discordant noise in your head
- Vibrating hum in your body
- Fear and self-judgment about having fear and anxiety
Anxiety is driven by signals sent out from the brain and body. These signals are designed to activate your system to respond to a perceived threat.
- Your brain and body are yelling ‘do something to stop the threat!’
- If there is a sense of powerlessness to stop the threat, these signals can get stuck circulating through your system
- This can feel overwhelming
- It can feel like a total loss of control
- It can cause you to feel flooded with the stress of life’s uncertainty and unpredictability
- People with anxiety are not inherently less capable of dealing with life
- Those who tend toward anxiety are often sensitive, empathetic, conscientious
- They are often highly attuned to their own physical sensations and potential threats in their environment
- They are wired to respond to anything that feels stimulating or threatening with a lot of energy
- As a result, it becomes very easy to feel overloaded and overwhelmed
Why do I have anxiety? |
Why do I have anxiety? |
How can I feel less anxious? |
How can I feel less anxious? |
Getting curious about how you as an individual experience anxiety.
- Talking about your fears
- Getting support to deal with those fears
- Being gentle and caring to yourself when you don’t feel safe or strong
- Observing your mind and body responses with more understanding and less negative judgment
- Learning how to talk about your anxiety with friends and loved ones so you can ask for what you need
- Bringing loved ones into sessions if you’d like
- Exploring varied strategies that help shift your thought patterns, behavioral responses and body sensations and allow you to develop confidence that…
- ‘I have options and strategies for dealing with the painful and scary parts of life’
- ‘I have ways to free myself from looping negative thoughts patterns’
- ‘I have things I can do to calm myself and deal with disruptive energy coursing through my mind and body’
- ‘I have agency and power to make choices to care for myself even when I am overwhelmed or scared’