What is anxiety?

Introduction

Do you often feel nervous or have that churning feeling in the pit of your stomach? Perhaps you experience other symptoms but aren’t sure if they are signs of anxiety. This article will help you to understand the key symptoms of anxiety and why you might be feeling this way.

Let’s set the scene first

Anxiety is an essential part of our survival instinct. We do not attempt to cross a motorway on foot due to the dangers connected to doing this. In the same way, if you were to break down at the side of a motorway, you would likely feel anxiety that would lead you to have your wits about you and ensure that you stand somewhere safe while you call for help. Symptoms of anxiety include nausea, a racing heart and tension. There is a handy tool at the end of this post that will help you assess your own levels of anxiety.

A definition

The NHS describes anxiety as “a feeling of unease, such as worry or fear, that can be mild or severe. Mild anxiety may be the nerves one might feel before speaking to an audience. These nerves may link to a worry that you might say the wrong thing or forget what you want to say altogether. In the case of mild anxiety, you will likely be able to push through that anxiety which will dissipate to a large degree once you start to speak.

On the other hand, severe anxiety may mean that you feel overwhelmed to the extent that you are not able to focus on a given task. Perhaps you become so concerned about how you may be seen by others that you avoid such situations altogether.

While it can be very frustrating to struggle with anxiety, it can be helpful to think of the fundamental purpose of anxiety. Before anything else, we are all designed for survival. 

We, therefore, have internal systems designed to keep us safe. This can be physically safe from harm or danger. It can also mean feeling safe from difficult situations that may harm us socially. 

For example, you may worry about being rejected by others if you make a fool of yourself by sharing your opinion. Therefore, it is understandable and common for people who struggle with anxiety to socially withdraw. It can feel safer to remove yourself from a situation than to be rejected. 

What are the symptoms of anxiety?

Symptoms can include but are not limited to the following:

•           Feeling restless

•           Grinding your teeth

•           Changes in libido

•           Feeling a regular sense of dread

•           A racing heart

•           Feeling sweaty

•           Rapid breathing

•           Tension

•           Nausea

•           Difficulty sleeping

•           Feeling the need to seek reassurance from others

·      Difficulty focusing

Why does anxiety cause these symptoms?

It is essential to highlight that some anxiety symptoms are helpful in the proper context. For example, our hearts race when we are anxious due to a rush of the hormone adrenaline, which causes an increase in our heart rate and blood pressure. This happens as part of our fight or flight response to be at the peak of our physical performance so we can either defend ourselves or run away if needed. The function of anxiety is to protect us from something awful happening, we will look at this later on.

Let’s take a closer look at this with an example. 

Think about a car alarm, it is designed to deter thieves. Alarms are effective because they have the desired effect. If there are two cars, one with an alarm and one without, a thief is likely to opt to try to steal the one without the alarm system. 

The above is an example of an alarm in good working order. It goes off only when someone is trying to steal or damage the car. 

Let’s consider a car with a very sensitive alarm; one that activates when a cat walks past. In this case, the alarm needs to be adjusted as it raises an alert when it isn’t required. 

This is the same with anxiety. 

Remember, anxiety has played an essential role in your life at some stage

You may have grown up in an environment where you had to always have your wits about you. Perhaps you weren’t safe. Maybe your internal alarm had to be sensitive so that you could respond in the best way you could. 

This may have meant physically defending yourself. It also may have meant going somewhere else in your mind to help you to cope with whatever may have been happening at the time. In both cases, your internal instinct enabled you to survive. 

In the same way, you may have grown up in a safe environment, but circumstances later in life led your fear instinct to become far more sensitive to your surroundings. 

If this is true for you, you’re a survivor. Allow yourself to exhale and acknowledge that you survived the best way you could. Or it may be what is helping you to survive now. If this is the case, some of the tips above may be helpful for you. 

You can also schedule a free 15 minute consultation if you would like to explore whether therapy could help you.

Fight, flight, freeze and fawn

The main function of anxiety is to help you to cope in the best way possible with a situation where you are in danger or when something overwhelming might happen. For example, if someone is in an abuse relationship, they may feel relatively relaxed when they are home alone. However, when they are at home with their partner they are likely to feel tense as they may need to be prepared to deal with any sudden change in their partner’s mood. 

In essence, they need to be ready to react quickly in an attempt to prevent the worse possible outcome. For anyone who has been in an abusive situation, either in adulthood or as a child, four primary responses have been identified as being the most common. These are fight, flight, freeze and fawn.

·      Fight – responding with aggression, this might be in the form of shouting or responding physically to the sense of threat. 

·      Flight – trying to remove oneself from the situation. This may be by running away or “going somewhere else in your head”, this is referred to as disassociation.

·      Freeze – think of a deer frozen in the headlights. The freeze response means that there is a level of shut down which makes it difficult for you to react against the threat.

·      Fawn – trying to appease the aggressor in an attempt to prevent the feared outcome. 

All of these responses are designed to help you to cope the best way you can.

There is no correct way to respond when you are anxious. We do the best we can with the tools we have. You may find it helpful to check out another article I have written that outlines five tips for managing anxiety.

Gaining an understanding of these responses is an important step in identifying strategies for dealing with how we respond in various situations. 

In conclusion

It is essential to acknowledge that anxiety is an integral part of being human. It may have helped you keep yourself as safe as possible in the past. The tools in this article will likely help you start to take a step back from the anxious feelings that you sometimes feel overwhelmed by and see things slightly differently. Feel free to free 15 minute consultation if you want to talk about how therapy may help you.