“Anxiety is the essential condition of intellectual and artistic creation”

Charles Frankel

ARTICLE

What is Anxiety?

ANXIETY IS A NORMAL AND ESSENTIAL PART OF ALL OUR LIVES.

Anxiety can motivate achievement, push us to run faster in a race, to play better in a competition, to think more quickly in an exam. Anxiety also mobilises us to deal with potentially threatening situations. It is not possible or even desirable to eliminate anxiety and worry from our lives. Life would be dull and possibly dangerous without it.

Anxiety is different from stress as it relates to a perceived threat that has not happened and might never happen. Anxiety, being a physiological response to a perceived threat or danger, can be a total figment of our imagination, relate to past experiences - for example a phobic response, or occur simply because we are intellectualising the situation too much and exaggerating potential risks and negative outcomes in our mind.

When we feel unsafe or uncomfortable, we experience heightened arousal, alertness and physical tension.

Symptoms of anxiety may include:

• Tense muscles, discomfort, unease, fidgeting, restlessness, tics, twitching, trembling
• Headaches
• Irritability, aggression, anger
• Mind racing with worrying thoughts
• Sleep disturbance, disturbing dreams
• Breathlessness, hyper-ventilating
• Sweating, flushing, blushing or becoming very cold
• Palpitations, racing heartbeat
• Needing frequent trips to the toilet
• Nausea, light-headedness
• A sense of depersonalisation, unreality
• An inability to move, freezing as if in danger
• A panic desire to avoid or get away from the situation

Anxiety may start to restrict our lives if as a result we attempt to avoid potentially uncomfortable situations. Anxious thoughts may disrupt our concentration and we may feel overwhelmed particularly when we perceive are under pressure to perform or meet other people’s expectations.

Some people cling to friends and constantly seek reassurance when they feel anxious; others withdraw and become isolated. These responses can be difficult for those around us to understand. Sometimes we may not even recognise that we are anxious and may attribute these symptoms to other causes.

If anxious thoughts and feelings become particularly intense, messages to the brain can trigger a chain of automatic physiological reactions normally associated with stress, which prepare us to fight, run away or hide from danger. This is known as the fight, flight or freeze response.

It is important that if you recognise that you are suffering from excessive and unresolved anxiety issues that you seek way to control and reduce your anxiety. Untreated the excessive anxiety starts a persistent stress response. Stress is the point at which the anxiety starts to cause physical and mental harm.

Keeping yourself in an constant state of excessive anxiety causes the stress response chemicals to be released into your body and remain there. These stress chemicals are designed to help us survive immediate danger at the expense of long term survival. They give us extra strength, speed and stamina to fight or escape the danger and shut down unnecessary physical and mental functions. Once successfully fought or escaped the body releases antidote chemicals to enable the body to return to its normal state. Remaining in a state of excessive anxiety maintains the stress response and stops the antidote chemicals being released, thus serious damage can be caused.