Do you ever worry beyond reason? Does your mind tend to overestimate the risks of life and underestimate the powers and resources you have to handle those risks? Do you feel a subtle, yet persistent, sense of anxiety that runs like an undercurrent just beneath your conscious awareness? If so, you're not alone. Most of us have some of that going on. In this article, you'll discover what you can do about it.
Let's start with simple definitions. Anxiety is a feeling state of fear, trepidation, or being overly-concerned. Worry is the fretful thinking we do when we feel anxious.
Now, a little anxiety and worry can be helpful. Being a bit anxious or worried may inspire you to study for a test, learn a presentation that you have for work, or prepare
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Understating your own abilities and resources to handle that challenge or danger.
In other words, when you feel anxious you are looking at what might happen and seeing it as hugely dangerous and highly likely to happen. At the same time, you are feeling that your talents, skills, and resources are small, inadequate, and not up to the challenge that you face. What you are facing looks like a huge "catastrophe" and what you have to fend it off feels like a cap gun.
Unless you take steps to curb your anxiety and manage your worry, it can take you into a downward spiral that can be difficult to get out of. So what steps can you take before that happens? And what can you do to pull yourself out of it if it does happen?
One great strategy is to keep a Mastering Anxiety Journal where you record moments of anxiety and worry. Awareness is the first and most essential step to anything you want to change. It enables you to identify anxiety-worry as soon as it arises, so you can insert a mental pause into your reaction and do something about it.
Here's a way to do that:
Whenever you feel anxiety and worry, pause, take a break from what you are doing, practice slow deep breathing to calm yourself, and, then, take a few moments to record the following
Anxiety is a monster that most people have to deal with on a daily basis. Even though anxiety is not actually a monster it still torments thousands of people every day, leaving them weak and scared. Anxiety defined means “distress or uneasiness of mind caused by fear of danger or misfortune” defined by Dictionary.com. In the epic poem of Beowulf, one could say that the townspeople had anxiety when it came to Grendel because they feared what he could do to them.
Anxiety is an extremely common feeling that occurs in everyday life. If I go out and meet new people, I get anxious while initiating a conversation with them. If any kind of crisis will happen in front of me for the first time I will get anxious for sure. For example,
It is never pleasant to feel anxious or distressed for any reason. However, there are several people who are diagnosed with anxiety disorders as they are very prevalent today. Mental health professionals are helping people overcome hurdles such as panic attacks, severe worry, social anxiety and other specific phobias. I think that anxiety is an emotion that everyone experiences at one time or another in their life. Anxiety can have a negative effect on an individual if it interferes with one’s daily routine and keeps them from doing what they normally do.
Anxiety is a feeling of tension associated with a sense of threat of danger when the source of the danger is not known. In comparison, fear is a feeling of tension that is associated with a known source of danger. I believe it is normal for us to have some mild anxiety present in our daily lives. Everyday that I can think of I have some kind of anxiety though out that day. Anxiety warns us and enables us to get ready for the ‘fight or flight’ response. However, heightened anxiety is emotionally painful. It disrupts a person's daily functioning.
In Kim’s article she talks about anxiety and what it is, she states that it is a normal feeling we all experience at some point in our lives. She states how there is bad anxiety and good. The good normally keeps us motivated and even protects us in dangerous situations. The not so good anxiety is when your worry gets out of control and overwhelming. Kim talks to licensed psychologist, Simon, Rego, he says “Anxiety is good at the right levels and in the right conditions. We need it. It fuels us to focus our attention and to think about behavioral solutions to threats in front of us. But it’s when it’s like a pot that bubbles over that it’s bad.” Sally Winston, is a PsyD founder and co-director of the Anxiety and Stress Disorder Institute, also gives examples of anxiety and an anxiety disorder for Kim’s article. “If I’m worried that I have a cavity and have an actionable plan, that’s normal and productive.”(Winston) “But if I’m not able to tolerate uncertainty, if I’m going around and around on unanswerable question, If the worry is excessive and unproductive, then that’s a sign of a disorder.”(Winston)
What if you woke up every morning with a feeling of dread about getting through the day? What if you were constantly in a state of worry? What if you had spontaneous, uncontrollable panic attacks throughout the day? What if you uncontrollably washed your hands to the point where they bled and cracked? What if you had an anxiety disorder? Anxiety is the most common illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults over the age of 18; that counts for 18% of the U.S. population. However, 22.8% of those cases are counted as severe anxiety.
What anxiety is. Like fear, anxiety causes nervousness and happens in reaction to danger; however, anxiety is a state of distress that can be drawn out for a long time and puts the body on alert for impending danger. It comes from the visions of possible dangers in the brain. Authors Kaplan and Sadock explained it as being “a diffuse, unpleasant, vague sense of apprehension…” (Ankrom). They are saying that it is a sense of nervousness, and that it makes people be on alert. It can also be described as butterflies in the stomach or a sense of
Do you know what it feels like to have your palms sweat, throat close up, and your fingers tremble? This is the everyday life of someone who lives with anxiety. As soon as I wake up in the morning, I hear my brain freaking out about the day ahead of me. What do I eat for breakfast? What do I do first when I get home from school? What happens if I get in a car crash on my way to school? A million thoughts at one time racing through my head. I never have the time to process all of them. Most mornings, I lay in my bed and have to take a few deep breaths to begin my hectic but not so hectic day. That’s just the beginning. It’s safe to say that I feel that I 'm an anxious person and that I have an anxiety disorder.
When you think of emotions you think of the classic, sadness, happiness, and madness. The one people often forget is the emotion of anxiety. Anxiety is one of the only emotions that you can have and actually not show it. Anxiety itself is very strange, depending on who you are, and how your brain works, anything can cause it . Anxiety usually follows you throughout your life but for some people, it changes as you change and grow. You aren 't the same height as you were when you were 6, you grew. There’ s a chance that the anxiety you encounter works the same way. Some classic emotions remain the same throughout your life for the most part, but anxiety as a tendency to morph.
How to Help Your Child Cope with Anxiety Anxiety is the feeling of nervousness or worry that your child might experience when faced with stressful event, like a test or a sports game. Anxiety can be accompanied by physical changes, like increases in heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure. It is normal for children to worry about some challenges they face. However, anxiety that interferes with daily activities and relationships may indicate your child has an anxiety disorder.
However, anxiety only becomes a problem if you are not able to manage it, control it, or when it gets in the way of your daily routine. According to Kremer and Moran (2008) “one reason why we tend to get uptight before competition could be related the pressure of being observed. Spectators of any sport are constantly evaluating the skills of the athletes they are watching, and this can be extremely daunting to those who are not trained to deal effectively with this pressure.” Not wanting to fail in a match or competition can also heap more pressure on an individual when realise they are being watched and the anxiety and stress increases to
The definition of anxiety by the American Psychological Association is, “...an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts and physical changes like increased blood pressure”(APA) Anxiety disorders affect 1 in 8 children, the largest source of the anxiety being stress. An article by the Huffington Post says, “31 percent of teens report feeling overwhelmed as a result of stress, 30 percent say that they feel sad or depressed as a result of stress, and 36 percent report feeling tired
People who are feeling anxious often exhibit some physical symptoms that are easy for a person to identify, while others are harder to recognize visually. For example a person may feel restless, have a choking feeling, increased heartrate, chest pain, nausea, dizziness, hot flashes or chills, and numbness which people are unable to notice unless they the person with these symptoms tells them what is happening. A person would be able to see someone feeling anxious starting to shake, breathing heavily, or having sweaty palms. People that are feeling anxious will also exhibit behavioral differences. For example, they will begin avoiding situations, trying to leave situations they feel anxious in, becoming self-destructive, limiting themselves, and becoming attached to objects and people. People who engage in these kinds of behaviors are usually coping with the feeling of anxiety or trying to avoid feeling anxious to begin with. Anxiety can also change ones cognitive thought processes, causing them to question various aspects of their lives, even if they have no direct effect on them, or it the effect would not occur for a while. Anxious people have difficulty handling the unknown, often feel they are going crazy, and feel trapped. It is important to identify these behaviors and physical symptoms in oneself and in others to avoid a potentially dangerous situation and to prevent one from allowing their anxiety to become uncontrollable or to find someone help if it is already becoming too
Fear can have such a powerful grasp on my mind that it will cause me to be consumed with it. Understand that I have the power to control my thoughts. Memorize encouraging quote and when the feelings of fear creep into my mind, I repeat this over and over until it becomes the guiding thought. When I leverage the power of shutting down undesirable thoughts with optimistic statement, I create a gate of opportunity to my self to break out of that dreaded Series of Fear.