Understanding and coping with Anxiety Disorders. Tips for everyone

First. What is anxiety?

Anxiety is an emotional response of the body and mind that comes out in a situation that you perceive as threatening. It usually involves overthinking, worrying, repetitive intense actions (like biting your nails, pulling your hair, walking around in circles), and alterations on your nervous systems, like fast heart beating, sweating, cold hands and feet, stomach pain, insomnia and other similar symptoms.

Why does anxiety appear?

The main reason is because the individual is afraid of something. Anxiety is a fear related body reaction, that involves anticipation of an uncomfortable event in the future. Therefore, if a person is afraid of being judged and criticized, it would be normal that this person reacts with anxiety if you ask her/him to do a public presentation. This person's mind will imagine a future (anticipate) in which there is a risk of being judged and criticized, facilitating a fearful emotional response that leads to a state of anxiety to cope with this situation.

Anxiety is a natural response of our body to face dangerous situations. It raises your heart beat, awakens your senses, brings up fearful thoughts of the future, and prepares you to run away or face the danger in order to survive.

The problem is that sometimes Anxiety may appear in situations that are not really life threatening and injure your normal activities and quality of life.

So if you are afraid of car accidents you will react with anxiety if someone asks you to drive.

If you fear rejection, you will be anxious when you are engaging in a conversation.

The specific responses of your body will depend on the extent of fear that you are experiencing and the features of your own biology. That’s why some people may react with intense panic attacks to certain events and others may just react with overthinking and distrust.

You need stress to reach a high level of performance in some activities (exams, competitions, etc.), but if the stress reaction is severe and prolonged on time, it becomes distress, and the body starts failing for not being able to cope with such intense demands. Anxiety would be the “label” of individuals that have experienced distress for long periods in their life, which may be related to different experiences in their life and their biology features.

What strategies help to cope with Anxiety?

Anxiety comes from fear, so the solution is to feel “safe and secure”, building a sequence of acts and thinking that lead to the awareness of the fact that “everything is ok”.

Some tricks are:

1. Rhythm breathing: yes, simple but true. If you just breathe (inhale for 5 to 6 seconds and exhale for 5 to 6 seconds) 20 times (less or more depending on each person) you will naturally relax your body. Especially with deep breaths, sitting or laying safely in a familiar place. Be aware that if you do it too much, you will even feel dizzy and sleepy, so just be sure to feel your body and look for the “relaxation” feeling.

2. Be aware of your thinking: ask yourself when you are having anxiety. What am I thinking? What am I imagining? you will see those tragics and negative thoughts clearly, and that is the moment when you can “minimize” their terrible meaning. is It really that terrible if you fail the exam? would It be so bad if you don’t drive like an expert? Would I cope better in this situation if I relax and accept what may happen? This is the moment where you need to trust yourself and your loved ones, to convince yourself that everything will be ok somehow and there is no need to panic.

3. Stay in the present: sometimes anxiety comes from our own mind and excess of analysis of a given situation. Stay present refers to the classical and fashion mindfulness approach that invites us to keep our attention in the present moment through our senses. This means, “get out of your head” (thinking) and start feeling (present). Everytime you feel the sensations in the plant of your feet, you are engaging with the present; if you pay attention to the feeling of breathing, you are also in the present. The same goes if you pay attention to the sounds around you, the beautiful colors that may surround you; the temperature of the place where you are or any other thing that could be in the present with you. By doing so, you will be stepping away from your tragic or negative thoughts that may never happen.

4. Look for safety: being with people you trust; staying in a warm and comfortable place; relaxing your body muscles; hugging a loved person; petting your cat; anything that connects you with love and protection may take you away from anxiety or help to cope with It.

5. Mindfulness body scan practice: The body scan guidelines are easily found on youtube. You can expect a voice guiding you through a full scan of your body sensations, from a safe space, non-judgemental, compassionate engagement with the present moment. This is very useful to practice relaxation and to identify your body sensations before anxiety even starts to get over your body.

6. Body signals and Calming Rituals: exploring anxiety signals in your past can allow you to create specific answer when you are experience anxiety in the present. If you see that you have cold hands, breathing fast, tying your jaw, or any other body signs, you can immediately activate calming rituals like deep breaths, relaxing your body and start recalling in your mind safe thinking patterns for your specific type of anxiety. If it is about a panic attack in the bus, It could be something like: “Here goes my typical anxiety reactions… this is normal in me and not dangerous; everything is ok and will be ok; It feel difficult to breath, but actually it is not; it feels uncomfortable, but I’m good; If I close my eyes and surrender to the feeling, I start noticing that nothing bad happen; and if something bad happen it doesn’t matter because I’m not alone, someone else will help me; I would take a deep breath and hold for 6 seconds; counting red cars passing by me; this just how I’m today, this will not be forever.”

Why doesn’t It Work for Everyone?

Because we all have different combinations of bodies, minds and past experiences. Sometimes you need to find, discover or build the right method for you. For some people, a calming trigger may be a smell, someone else's voice; or a specific memory. For some others, breathing may not help, and tensing the body could be more effective before trying to relax It.

Some individuals have never before in their life felt completely “safe and protected”. Especially if they grow up within families with violence and abusive dynamics.

Feeling safe is not an easy thing to do for everyone and in some cases you may need to learn to trust someone else (a friend, a lover or a therapist) in order to experience calm, love, support or protection. If a person has suffered from betrayals and treason from people that they blindly trust before, It may be really difficult to learn to trust again, and in this context may take a lot of energy to heal the trauma.

If you are experiencing anxiety problems and you want to overcome these problems for sure. I strongly suggest you give therapy a chance and improve your quality of life.

You can have 1 free evaluation session to talk about It. Just write me a private message to book a session.

We all deserve a happy life :)

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