A Brief Guide to Anxiety: Part 1
Understanding Anxiety
“For anxiety and dread, the threat is in the future. For fear, the threat is now - in the present.” -Brene Brown
According to the Mental Health Foundation, approximately 1 in 6 adults in the UK regularly experience a mental health issue like anxiety, and women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with anxiety than men. It’s therefore perhaps not that surprising that anxiety is one of the most common challenges I support my clients with at Pleasure Map.
Throughout this series, I’ll offer an overview of anxiety, exploring its nature, causes, symptoms, tools and methods for dealing with it, as well as an insight into how I support my clients at Pleasure Map. This is by no means a comprehensive guide but should provide you with some useful information to support you on your journey.
In Part I: What is Anxiety? we will explore the nature of this natural survival mechanism, the physical and psychological manifestations, and why you might be triggered, even in non-threatening situations.
In Part II: Managing Anxiety I'll provide guidance on some of the useful ways you can begin to alleviate anxiety, and how preparation can help reduce the likelihood you’ll be triggered.
In Part III: Getting Started with Pleasure Map, you'll be provided with an exclusive glimpse into the commencement of the Pleasure Map client journey, and how this introduction provides an opportunity to lay the groundwork for setting clients up for success.
What is anxiety?
Anxiety is a complex emotional state characterised by feelings of fear, worry, and unease. When faced with potential threats or perceived dangers, our body activates the “fight or flight” response. It is a natural survival response that is designed to protect us and was initially developed as an instinctual mechanism to handle immediate physical threats, such as encounters with predators.
However, in our modern world where most of us are seldom face to face with hungry lions, anxiety encompasses a range of social, emotional, and psychological stressors, and is one of the most prevalent mental health issues in our society.
For some, anxiety can cause frequent, but manageable unease and discomfort, but for others it can be overwhelming, crippling, and result in the kind of emotional distress that leads to the complete avoidance of or withdrawal from social situations.
Either way, developing an understanding of your individual relationship with anxiety will be a useful prerequisite as you seek to find the most suitable tools and techniques for managing it, which we will be exploring later in the series.
What are the signs and symptoms of anxiety?
The physical symptoms of anxiety can include an increased heart rate, rapid breathing, trembling, muscle tension, headaches, and gastrointestinal issues. The severity of these physical symptoms can vary, providing valuable cues to identify and manage anxiety more effectively.
Anxiety impacts mental wellbeing, leading to excessive worry, restlessness, irritability, difficulty concentrating, sleep disturbances, and a sense of impending doom. Identifying these symptoms is vital for seeking appropriate support and interventions to manage anxiety effectively and improve overall mental wellbeing.
What triggers anxiety in non-threatening situations?
Even in seemingly non-threatening situations, your nervous system can trigger you into a state of anxiety. You may already be aware of what triggers your anxiety in certain situations, for example, the smell of coffee might reignite memories of an assault that you experienced in a particular café. Your nervous system now associates this aroma with danger! Conversely though, in that same example the cause of the trigger may not be readily apparent.
(Trauma, and the broad range of other root causes of anxiety, are extensive and complex, so we won’t be exploring those in depth in this A Brief Guide to Series).
Your nervous system is smart. Like, super smart! Not quite ‘start a business whilst you’re asleep’ smart, but smart. For your nervous system to properly prime your alert system to potential danger it needs to remember past encounters with danger. This includes, for example, embedding early life experiences that at the time you didn’t have the cognitive capacity to process, such as if you were assaulted as a child. We will dive a little more into this later in the series when we explore tools for recognising and managing anxiety, and how you can stabilise your nervous system.
Given what we’ve learnt so far, I think it’s important to acknowledge that anxiety is not inherently negative; it’s our in-built alert system. It becomes an issue when you’re easily or repeatedly triggered, and as a result negatively impact your wellbeing and your everyday life.
Hopefully by having a better understanding of anxiety and its role as your innate defender, you can start showing your nervous system, and yourself, some love! Then the next step is to develop the skills to manage it.
In Part II: Managing Anxiety, we will look at some tools to help you better understand and manage your anxiety and spotlight a particular technique that many of my clients find useful.
Disclaimer: This blog is designed to be an informative guide and should not be taken as medical advice.