Anxiety
Counselling for Anxiety
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is a natural human experience that essentially alerts us to a perceived threat of some kind.
We may have a sense of doom or anticipation that something bad will happen, and we can experience many different physical symptoms too.
If feelings of anxiety are particularly strong, or persist for a long time, it can be a distressing and overwhelming experience.
Triggers
Many things can trigger anxiety, including health concerns, fluctuating hormones, medications, skipping meals, financial worries, caffeine, alcohol, social events, stress, conflict, and other triggers that hold personal meaning for us, such as specific places, smells etc.
If we do not understand why we feel anxious, this in itself can create further anxiety.
Fear or Anxiety?
Although there are overlaps in how symptoms are experienced, fear differs from anxiety.
Fear is experienced when there is a clear and defined threat, rather than a sense of vague or indeterminable danger.
'Fight', 'Flight', 'Freeze' , 'Fawn'
Our body's natural response to the stress of any threat, actual or perceived, is to activate the 'fight', 'flight' , 'freeze' , 'fawn' responses, so that we can survive it.
We do not get to consciously choose our response, and we may experience more than one.
This is important to note, especially if we are left feeling shame or guilt around how we responded to a certain stressful situation or event.
Once we start to recognise our own stress responses, we can learn how to work with these.
Activation
- 'Fight' and 'flight' responses are activated by our autonomic nervous system.
- Our bodies become flooded with hormones that prompt us to either stay and fight the threat, or flee to safety (flight).
- Our hearts race, our muscles tense, our breathing becomes rapid, we may experience tingling skin, feel sick or need the toilet as our brain evaluates how to best protect ourselves.
- If our brain decides that the situation is overwhelming, and we are unable to escape the perceived threat through 'fight' or 'flight', our parasympathetic nervous system may move us into the 'freeze' or 'fawn' responses in order to try to keep us safe.
- In 'freeze' we become immobile.
- Our muscles may feel stiff and heavy, we may not be able to think straight, our minds can go blank and we may have trouble remembering what happened, we may find that we hold our breath and feel numb or cold.
- We may dissociate and feel like we are not really here, or feel that we are watching things from outside of our bodies.
- 'Fawn' or 'appease' is where we immediately try to appease others in order to avoid conflict. 'People pleasing' is a term that is associated with this threat response. A response to trauma.
- We may find it very difficult to say no to others.
- We may struggle to recognise our own emotions and needs when we are triggered into this response.
- Voicing our opinions may be incredibly challenging for us.
- This is often a response from childhood experience and can be more difficult to recognise as we may view this as our norm.
- We may simply see this as part of who we are, rather than as a defence mechanism in response to threat.
Back to Safety
When our brain is able to recognise that danger is no longer present, it switches off the alert by releasing more hormones, and we gradually move back to a place of feeling calm and safe. Sometimes this process can cause us to shake.
When we experience anxiety, this alert does not turn off and we continue to perceive danger.
Slowing things down, bringing our attention to our bodies, to all of our senses, and especially our breathing, is an effective way of grounding and soothing ourselves.
Everyday Experiences
We may experience anxiety with common stressful experiences such as taking a driving test, sitting exams, interviews, starting a new job, public speaking etc, and some people will experience more anxiety than others.
Since Covid-19 and our experience of several lockdowns, everyday experiences such as going out, shopping and socialising with friends have also become more of a trigger for many people.
The level of stress we experience will depend upon how we perceive the situation, along with our ability to manage it.
Feeling Stuck
If we are experiencing long term or chronic stress, we may find that we feel stuck.
Stress and anxiety can lead to our sleep patterns and our immune systems becoming negatively affected.
We may adopt unhealthy avoidance behaviours such as increasing food or alcohol intake, mindlessly scrolling through social media, avoiding going to certain places etc
Some avoidance behaviours may feel like self-care in the short term, but they actually reinforce anxiety and can add to our stress levels.
Excessive self-criticism and feelings of shame may also heighten and continue to drive anxiety, in what can feel like a perpetual loop.
If we have experienced recent trauma, it can take a few months to feel that responses have settled after the event.
If symptoms are not decreasing beyond 4-6 weeks, including on-going flashbacks, it can be useful to check in with a GP to discuss the potential of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and appropriate support.
Counselling
Whilst feeling anxious at times is natural, if you find that you dismiss how much you are dealing with in order to manage, you may be gradually increasing your stress levels, storing up how you really feel, and this in turn may present as anxiety.
If the information on this page resonates with you and your current experiences, or you are unsure whether or not you are experiencing anxiety, you are very welcome to get in touch with me.
Counselling offers you a safe space where you can slow things down, learn to identify triggers and understand what your experiences mean for you.
You can learn compassionate ways of managing stress, anxiety and relating to yourself.
Work With Me
To make an enquiry or to book an initial consultation with myself, please use the contact form on this website.