What is anxiety and how can counselling help?
What is anxiety?
Anxiety results from the body's instinctual reaction to dangerous, threatening and stressful situations. The body prepares itself to fight, run away or freeze, this is known as the 'fight-flight-freeze' response.
Your heart rate will increase and you may get sweaty palms as well as a number of other symptoms. It may be that your body is responding to physical harm such as an approaching car, or something stressful such as exams, an interview or meeting new people.
While these responses are absolutely appropriate in the short term to protect you from harm, feelings of anxiety can sometimes go on for a long time – long after the harm has gone away.
When anxiety lasts a long time and starts to have an impact on everyday life you may be suffering from an anxiety disorder.
What does anxiety feel like?
Some of us are familiar with the expressions that describe common physical feelings relating to anxiety, for instance having butterflies in the stomach or jelly legs.
However, anxiety can show itself in a range of physical ways, such as, muscle tension, sweating, stiffness of the neck, back pain, dizziness, sleeplessness, hyperventilating, panic attacks and wanting to use the toilet more. These are caused by the hormones released by the fight-flight-freeze response.
Some of the common causes of anxiety are:
ongoing stress (e.g. pressure at work or from family life)
stress from particular situations (e.g. losing your job or moving house)
experiencing childhood abuse (physical, psychological or sexual)
witnessing or being involved in a traumatic event
drug use
When to seek help
Anxiety is an appropriate reaction to external stresses, however frequent signs and symptoms indicate a problem. Reoccurring anxiety can become very distressing, it can interfere with you life and your health and wellbeing.
The most important thing you should do if you are concerned about your mental health is talk to a specialist. This could be your GP, a counsellor or a helpline.
Counselling can help anxiety
Anxiety can occur for a wide variety of reasons or may seem to come out of the blue.
In a previous article I wrote about the benefits of seeking therapy. Where the cause is not clear to you counselling can help you explore the roots of these feelings, understand them and talk about ways of dealings with situations.
As a counsellor I can support you to explore what you're going through and why you feel as you do. I can help you learn how to cope with anxiety, find ways to overcome it that work for you.
I’d start by looking at what’s going on for you. What's causing these fears? Are there any underlying issues, anything that triggers these feelings of anxiety? I would explore the unhelpful thinking patterns that you might be having.
I work with people and their bodies. I’d help you slow down the physical response that’s causing anxiety.
Take action today
Anxiety can be treated with counselling, medication or a combination of the two. Some people who experience anxiety, or a fear of something they can easily avoid, decide to live with it and to not seek support.
It’s important to understand that anxiety can be addressed, even in severe cases. Although anxiety usually doesn’t go away, you can learn to manage it and live a happy, healthy life.
Sophia England, Counsellor, Newtown Counselling