Keep Calm and Carry On

If you have found yourself in a difficult problem at work, preparing to take a test/exam, first day at school, or before making an important decision, you must have experienced uneasiness, fear, or dread. This may have even caused you to sweat profusely, feel restless and tense, and have a rapid heartbeat. This is just a normal reaction to stress. Another word for it is anxiety, and this is good anxiety… yes you heard me… good anxiety! This anxiety can help you to cope in the face of distress, it may even give you a boost of energy or help you focus. The body experiences anxiety when it goes into a fight or flight type of high alert. However, for people who are with anxiety disorders, this feeling of fear is not temporary and can be really overwhelming and unpleasant. 

This happens when the feelings appear to be all-consuming and interfere with daily living. There are many ways you can know if you are crossing the borderline from just anxious feeling to pathological anxiety. One of the ways to know is when you feel these symptoms of anxiety, but there is no necessary trigger to these feelings. For instance, you are not preparing for any exams, or in the face of a dangerous outcome, however, your heart is just racing rapidly, you are sweating on your face or palm and feet, or restless. Furthermore, another way to know that it is no longer good anxiety is just having the thought that you would not do well or projecting your thoughts into other people.

You see, many times, anxiety is reinforced by our negative thought processes. This was discussed in the previous blog post on the importance of positive thinking. Thought processes like believing things can only be black or white, overgeneralizing that just one negative event is a never-ending chain of defeat, or jumping into conclusions by concluding things even when they haven’t even happened are all going to keep you feeling pathologically anxious. You may want to stop that immediately.

If you are the type that also catches yourself performing repeated behaviours like hand washing, counting, checking the door a million times if it is locked, setting that object in a particular way or cleaning as a result of obsessive and intruding thoughts that you hope would prevent these obsessive thoughts or making them go away, you should want to check it. A lot of times, this would keep you worried a lot and even for nothing if you eventually critically analyse the behaviour.

Anxiety disorders unlike everyday anxiety would lead to disruption in one’s social life, family life, and even work life. The normal worries about events would dissipate after the event has passed and you would get back to normal, however, the disorder would cause significant distress. This is because the anxious feeling would linger even after the event is over and they can be extremely upsetting, stressful, and distressing. 

One can encounter anxiety disorders for a variety of reasons, including environmental stressors like difficulties at work, relationship issues, or family issues, genetics like an increased likelihood to experience it due to family history, as well as medical factors like the signs of a different disease, the effects of a medication, or the stress of extensive surgery or prolonged recovery. Some other reason is the brain chemistry, as psilocybin is a neurotransmitter that has been linked to anxiety disorders, and lastly, quitting illicit drugs, which affects, the brain might amplify the influence of other potential causes of severe anxious feelings called the withdrawal symptoms.

You may want to seek help from psychologists and/or therapists if you are experiencing these issues, they are very treatable and you would feel even much better after therapy.