What is Anxiety
Everyone has stress
Anxiety is normal. Having some anxiety is a natural survival mechanism. Everybody needs some level of anxiety: it helps us to recognize danger and to stay out of harm's way. Anxiety is only a problem when we have too much of it and worrying becomes a way of life.
But you should not be feeling anxious about travelling, meeting people, going to work. Other people are not thinking about you. There is no reason to feel anxious.
For some people, ordinary everyday things can be very frightening. Sometimes the feelings become overwhelming. You get panicked. You feel like you are going to die. That is a sign that you need to seek help.
It not just you who suffers: it affects your family, friends and people at work. Knowing they are being hurt eats away at your self esteem and confidence all the more.
Anxiety: chronic anxiety; phobias; and panic attacks.
The most common type of anxiety is called generalized anxiety. This anxiety seems to have no specific cause. This typically gets worse over time. Trying to face it or forcing yourself to ignore it often makes it worse.
About five percent of the population suffer from this but few seek treatment. Most don't realize they need treatment or that treatment even exists. There are very effective treatments available, including hypnosis for anxiety.
Even if you have generalized anxiety, you can get into the level of calm and control you want. You can learn to control intrusive thoughts and feelings.
Chronic anxiety
This occurs when you not aware of any reason for feeling anxious. But you can't stop worrying about the future. Because there is no real reason for it, people start worrying about why they feel anxious. This causes even more anxiety, and so the problem gets worse.
People with chronic anxiety manage to keep the process under control most of the time. But the anxiety never lets up. It's a constant effort to control your anxious thoughts. The never ending pressure is itself stressful. So the problem feeds on itself.
Panic attacks anxiety
Anxiety can arise from a single event at work. Or a relationship break up. Or some crisis hits you. Maybe you went through a long period of stress and frustration.
That stress is then applied to other areas of your life. Even though the crisis is over, part of you cannot let go of that stress and anxiety response. It is as if your switch is stuck at On.
If left uncontrolled, this can lead to panic attacks. Panic attacks are frightening, but not actually dangerous. Nobody ever died of a panic attack. Most panic attacks are more about the fear of an attack happening in front of others. It's not the panic attack itself.
What causes anxiety attacks?
Everything we do, everything we see and hear, triggers a process in our subconscious mind. Your focus goes 'inside' to look for matching experiences from your past. When you find a matching experience, you do the same thing that worked for you the last time.
That is how you know how to react to every input from your eyes and ears. This process is instant and automatic.
Imagine you see someone eating a red apple. Your mind jumps to your memories around 'eating an apple'. It might include memories of red things in general.
Your mind will rapidly flick through its 'filing cabinet'. It examines everything it remembers about apples, red, round, eating. It will flicker through thousands of images, memories and feelings.
These are always there, but outside of conscious awareness. When an image or memory is revived, it triggers a reaction. That is what your memory is for. It tells you how to react. You can ignore it, run away, fight it, or appease it.
In the brief instant that they flicker across your mind, the normal person will react to one or two. This might trigger fear, sadness, anger - any emotion. Other memories will trigger nostalgia, or happiness.
For an anxious person their reaction to the retrieved images is distorted. Their reaction is always fear. This sets off feelings or alarm or threat. They are not even aware of the cause.
They get upset, frightened, anxious every time they do the same activity, or see the same thing. If it is one specific thing, then it is called a phobia. Phobias are specialized type of anxiety. There is a whole section on Phobias.
Anxiety arises when many things trigger the fear reaction. Eventually it feels like everything triggers it.
