Managing anxiety

Anxiety vs feeling anxious

There’s a big difference between having anxiety and feeling anxious. It’s a common human experience to feel anxious about different life circumstances and stressors; waiting for the results of a medical test, will “he” call me after our first date, how will we pay our mortgage this month? The list goes on. This kind of “being anxious” is related to real-life events and typically dissipates once the moment has passed.

However, having anxiety is different. Sufferers report feeling heightened emotions, in both intensity and duration, which are not proportional to the stressor or trigger. Anxiety can trigger a full-blown fight-flight-or-freeze response of our sympathetic nervous system, but because anxiety is an emotional response to something that hasn’t occurred, there is nothing to fight or flee. Our mind goes round and round, replaying possibilities and scenarios.

How anxiety feels

If you have ever truly experienced anxiety, you would know that in the “eye of the storm” you would do just about anything to stop or avoid it. You might experience:

• Sweaty palms
• Racing heart
• Heavy chest
• Nausea
• Dizziness

Lisa says she often uses the metaphor of anxiety as an alarm. An alarm alerts us to things, gains our attention and forces us to respond. Similarly, anxiety can help us be aware of potential threats, dangers and areas in our world that need attention. Unfortunately, just as the wind can trigger your house alarm, your internal anxiety alarm can also send a “false” reading of imminent danger or stress.

Tips to manage anxiety

If you’re prone to anxious thoughts, general stress or find yourself overwhelmed more often than not, you need to work with it and on it. A key ingredient in this process is not wishing the anxiety away – rather, it is enhancing your ability to tolerate the feelings when they present themselves and to understand their triggers.

1. Seek professional help

Don’t “Dr Google” it. Assess if the level of anxiety you feel costs you opportunities, experiences or general health and happiness. When you do this, also understand, anxiety is not a life sentence.

2. Examine your thoughts

When you feel anxious. Try to identify specific thinking patterns that could look something like this:

Fortune-telling – ‘Something bad will happen…’

Mind-reading – ‘He’s not that into me…’

Catastrophic thinking – ‘It would be terrible if…’

3. Externalise anxiety

Seeing it as a separate entity to “who you are” is powerful. Consider anxiety as something you experience, external to yourself, perhaps even visualise it sitting across from you, so when it tries to pull you in and swallow you whole, you can see it for what it is.

4. Stay in the present moment

Anxiety can make your thoughts live in a catastrophic future that is unlikely to eventuate. Practising mindfulness can help keep you in the here and now and safe from unnecessary worry.

5. Look after the little things

Focus on improving your overall wellbeing, by:

• Keeping active
• Eating well
• Spending time outside
• Spending time with family and friends (who don’t stress you out)
• Reducing your stress

¹.Australian Bureau of Statistics. National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing: Summary of Results, 2007. Cat. No. (4326.0). Canberra: ABS.
². Australian Bureau of Statistics. National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing: Summary of Results, 2007. Cat. No. (4326.0). Canberra: ABS.