What is anxiety?
Anxiety is a normal response that is there to protect us. When faced with a threat, our body responds with one of the ‘three F’s’; Fight, Flight or Freeze. Some systems in our body gear up and others shut down in order to help us to deal with the threat.
Although many of the threats we face these days are psychological rather than physical, we haven’t evolved away from experiencing this physical response.
Anxious thoughts
As well as creating a physical response, anxiety can impact on our thinking, changing the way that we view the world. We might overestimate the threat, or worry about things that are very unlikely to happen. We can also worry about the anxiety itself and underestimate our capacity to deal with it.
Managing anxiety
Luckily there are many tools and techniques that we can develop to help us to cope with and manage our anxiety. These include physical techniques, changing the way we think about a situation and gradually getting back to activities and events that we might be avoiding.
Don’t allow anxiety to make your world smaller. If you are finding it difficult to manage your anxiety and it is stopping you from doing things that you would like to or that you need to do, get in touch to see if we are the right support for you.