Anxiety

Don’t Let Your Anxiety Defeat You

It’s physical and mental.

And the physical symptoms provoke the mental symptoms and vice versa.

Promoting and antagonizing each other until you’re left exhausted and paralyzed, frightened but inert.

It feels like breathing through a coffee stirrer straw – never getting enough air, fearing you will pass out.

Which makes you wonder, “Why am I so worried about this?”

Why does it have to be this uncomfortable?

“How do I make it stop?”

Which leads you into the battle: me vs myself vs I – thoughts that constantly contradict each other, some logical, but inaccessible, while others are paranoid and utterly compelling.

And the more you confuse and scare yourself, the greater the intensity of the cold fire shooting up and down your arms.

Butterflies turn into tightness and nausea in your stomach, or the feeling that your heart is going to beat out of your chest.

And then the exhaustion…

…utter mental and physical fatigue because making even one simple decision is filled with so many back-and-forths, what-ifs, negative predictions, and terror.

But anxiety actually only comes from one of 3 places:

Fight or flight – when we are in actual, physical danger, our panic response sets in and we get a surge of adrenaline. This is the response that saves us from an angry bear or that enables a mother to lift a car off of her infant.

Being on the brink of the unknown – when you’re about to walk into an unknown situation – like your first day at a new school or a new job – it makes sense to be anxious – you’re on alert and your brain doesn’t yet have any information on which to make predictions and assess the situation. So it’s scary because you’re going in blind.

Thoughts we scare ourselves with – our brains are future-predictors, taking data and synthesizing it into a sense of what we might expect, helping us read cues and navigate our world. The problem is that we have a tendency to synthesize information to predict worst outcomes. It’s hard not to be afraid if we are always anticipating that bad things are coming. And sometimes we get so practiced at making negative predictions that we inadvertently trigger our fight or flight response.

Therapy can help you figure out which of these 3 types of anxiety are at play.

And it’s likely that each one is – at different points.

Therapy will give you concrete tools and techniques to manage appropriate anxiety and dismantle unjustified anxiety.

And it will help you understand some of the processes that led you to this point where the world is constantly being assessed with fear.

Embrace the calm – stop your negative predictions, fear, and panic. Call to schedule a consultation, and let’s talk about how we can help.