Anxiety
Anxiety is distressing not only because of fear itself, but because it can feel relentless, confusing, disproportionate or senseless.
Sometimes it relates to clear pressures in life. At other times, it seems to arise for no obvious reason.
It may show up as constant worry, physical tension, panic, racing thoughts, disturbed sleep or a persistent sense that something is wrong even when you cannot explain why. Left unchecked, anxiety can begin to narrow life and wear a person down.
Below I outline some common forms of anxiety, what can keep it going, and how therapy can help you understand and work with it effectively.
How Anxiety Feels
Anxiety feels different from person to person, but it is always experienced in both body and mind.
Thoughts can become intrusive, thinking speeds up and attention becomes difficult to shift. You may become caught in patterns of anticipating or trying to control threats. This keeps the nervous system in fight-or-flight mode – leaving you feeling tense, stressed, on-edge and often disrupting sleep.
Avoidance patterns can then develop, bringing short-term relief while reinforcing the anxiety over time.
Common Forms of Anxiety and Panic
Anxiety and panic take different forms, and many people experience overlaps rather than one neat category.
General Anxiety
Persistent worry, tension, overthinking and difficulty switching off. Can attach to anything in life but often has no single clear cause.
Social Anxiety
Fear of attention, scrutiny, judgement, embarrassment, or feeling exposed around others.
Health Anxiety
Sustained worry about symptoms, illness and bodily sensations.
Panic
Overwhelming surges of fear, often with racing heart, dizziness, breathlessness and fear of losing control or immediate danger.
Situational Anxiety
Anxiety linked to specific circumstances such as work stress, travel, relationships or change.
No list is comprehensive and many people move between a variety of experiences.
What Keeps Anxiety Going
Anxiety is often kept going by patterns of relating with the world that make sense in the short term but become costly over time.
Avoiding anxiety-inducing situations brings immediate relief, but teaches you that the source of anxiety was really a threat. Constant checking, reassurance-seeking, overthinking and controlling situations has a similar affect.
Stress, exhaustion, unresolved experiences and living under pressure keep the nervous system in a heightened state – which may paradoxically come to feel familiar or reassuring as well as overwhelming.
Over time, many people begin to fear the anxiety itself, which further strengthens the cycle.
Working with Anxiety
Sustaining real change in anxiety involves some symptom-relief tools, but also developing a deeper understanding. If work stops only at symptom management, relief is likely to be partial or temporary.
We may look at ways to steady the nervous system, reduce avoidance and respond differently to spirals of worry or panic.
We will also try to understand what the anxiety may be connected to, including current pressures, past experiences and patterns of relating.
We may explore your relationship with fear and anxiety itself. Is it possible to allow some anxiety, rather than be governed by it? After all, everyone experiences anxiety at times.
Over time, the aim is often not to eliminate all anxiety, but to help you feel less ruled by it and more able to live freely. And as you start to live more freely with anxiety, the anxiety reduces naturally.