12/07/2022
QUIETING
ANXIETY
OVERLAPPING CRISES HAVE MADE MANY OF US JUMPY. BUT HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU HAVE SLIPPED INTO A SERIOUS PROBLEM AND NEED HELP?
By Sara Renni
Clinical Psychologist
Anxiety touches everyone to varying degrees. Physical discomfort not distressing thoughts is most often what drive people with anxiety to seek treatment.
Core features are excessive fear and worry, and one of the major underlying factors is a feeling of uncertainty about situations that occur in daily life. There are exceeding uncertain times due to combination of economic instability, social instability, environmental catastrophes and Covid 19 pandemic.
Managing anxiety will ensure it doesn’t rule our life.
How chronic ANXIETY HARMS THE BODY
Anxiety is part of our body stress response system and it can be uncomfortable, overwhelming and sometimes plain confusing. Anxiety is future oriented emotional response to a perceived threat.
It involves a universal biochemical response as well as a high individual emotional response. Biochemical Reaction is a natural emotion and a survival mechanism. When we confront a perceived threat, our bodies respond in specific ways. Physical reactions to fear include sweating, increased heart rate, and high adrenaline levels that make us extremely alert. This physical response is also known as the “fight or flight” response, with which your body prepares itself to either enter combat or run away. This biochemical reaction is likely an evolutionary development. It's an automatic response that is crucial to our survival. Emotional Response to fear, on the other hand, is highly personalized. Because fear involves some of the same chemical reactions in our brains that positive emotions like happiness and excitement do, feeling fear under certain circumstances can be seen as fun, like when you watch scary movies. Some people are adrenaline seekers, thriving on extreme sports and other fear-inducing thrill situations. Others have a negative reaction to the feeling of fear, avoiding fear-inducing situations at all costs.
Anxiety show itself in different ways. We might perceive something s threatening even when it isn’t or go to great lengths to avoid uncomfortable situations. We might constantly over think plans or spend all our time creating solutions to worst case scenarios. May be we feel indecisive and fear making the wrong decision, or we might find our self restless, keyed up and unable to relax.
Often those symptoms last only as long as certain situations are present. Other times chronic anxiety can tip into becoming a chronic disorder, such as Generalized anxiety disorder, Panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, Obsessive Compulsive disorder, Post Traumatic stress disorder or a Phobia
There isn’t a blood test for anxiety.
TREAT ANXIOUS FEELING WHEN THEY PERSIST
Anxieties Are Manageable
Ways to overcome our fears……………………………..
1. Take time out/ Break It's impossible to think clearly when you're flooded with fear or anxiety. By taking break or time out will help us to think better and it will indirectly help to solve the fear related to issue.
2. Breathe through panic Breath inhale and exhale. It will help us to stabilize our breath and think better.
3. Face your fears We can overcome fear only by confronting it. It means by analyzing and finding out ways to solve it. That will motivate us to face the fear. All other way out’s are temporary.
4. Imagine the worst When we imagine the worst we will get many other alternatives to move on before getting it worst.
5. Look at the evidence We all jump to conclusion very fast by getting an information and generalize it with others, but if we find the proof of that information we will able to reduce our fear because each person perceive it in a unique way
6. Don’t make Do’s and Don’t At first we have to understand ourselves that we are not a perfect person. We can try things to make it perfect
7. Talk about it We can share our fear with others who can provide a positive vibes instead of negatives vibes. In other way Interacting about fear will help us to know more options to decrease the fear.
Learning to live with fear is an individual process that requires trial and error to get just right……………while acceptance is the first and most important step some lifestyle changes have been proved to take the edge of as well………
