A bit about Stress, Anxiety and Panic Attacks
Whether it is Stress, Anxiety or Panic Attacks they are all much the same thing, just more intense and feel more threatening.
These are not an illness, they are not a weakness and they are not something wrong with you.
They are natural and essential responses to protect you from danger.
But sometimes they get out of proportion and become connected to other things.
Anxiety affects more people than you imagine.
You are not alone. But because people don’t tend to talk about it, we can feel it is just us who are suffering.
Recent research found that almost half the population believe they are more anxious today than they were 5 years ago and that it significantly stops them doing things.
Anxiety comes in many forms
1 in 5 of us feel anxious all or a lot of the time
Generalised Anxiety Disorder accounts for 30% of mental health problems
Mixed Anxiety & Depression affects 1 in 10
Agoraphobia affects up to 1 in 8
Social anxiety
Performance Anxiety
Health Anxiety
Specific Fears – spiders, flying, heights
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
The symptoms of Anxiety are uncomfortable and often very scary
Pounding heart, palpitations, difficulty breathing, chest pains, headaches, excessive sweating, shaking limbs, feeling of choking, nausea and dizziness.
Often, because we can’t believe that such terrifying symptoms can just be down to Anxiety, we are convinced that we must have a serious physical illness such as a heart problem.
In extreme situations, especially with Panic Attacks we believe that we are going to die.
But we are not.
So often, part of our brain knows these feelings can seem illogical and there is no need to be anxious, but we feel powerless to stop them.
So we can end up thinking we are weak and unable to control ourselves.
We can even fear we are going mad.
But we are not.
Anxiety is only likely to get worse the longer we put off dealing with it.
What may begin as stress or mild anxiety can so easily grow and become Panic Attacks or other life-limiting feelings.
It is very rare that anxiety will just go away or even remain at the same level if we don’t do anything about it.
It is likely to get more intense or affect more areas of our life.
Another problem is that what may seem obvious coping strategies not only don’t work, they usually make it even worse.
Avoidance of situations is common and a quarter of individuals will turn to comfort eating and/or alcohol.
But the good news is that Anxiety can be resolved and more easily than you think.
Stress. Anxiety and Panic Attacks are always easier to resolve the earlier we take steps to deal with them.
And will be long-lasting when you Resolve Your Anxiety rather than just use coping strategies to work round the symptoms.