"Bad with your nerves" "A worrier" "Stressed out" "Unable to relax" "Tense and nervous"

.... Are all words we might use to describe someone who has a problem with anxiety. If someone has too much stress for too long anxiety is very often the result. This leaflet is about anxiety, and aims to help you to:

  1. Recognise whether or not you may be suffering from symptoms of anxiety.
  2. Understand what anxiety is, what can cause it, and what can keep it going.
  3. Overcome your anxiety by learning better ways of coping with it.

Anxiety is something we all experience from time to time. It is a normal response to situations that we see as threatening to us. For example, if we had to go into hospital for an operation, or had to sit a driving test, of take an exam, it would be natural to feel anxious. Anxiety at certain levels can even be helpful in some situations like when we need to perform well, or cope with an emergency.

Some anxiety is not at all helpful because:

Am I suffering from anxiety?

These are some typical experiences of people who suffer from anxiety. If you are suffering from anxiety you may have thoughts like these yourself. Sometimes it is possible to be suffering from anxiety and not even know it, particularly if you don't think of yourself as an anxious person. People often mistake symptoms of anxiety for a physical illness. Therefore, the first step in learning to deal with anxiety is recognising whether anxiety is a problem for you.

Anxiety can affect us in at least four different ways. It affects:

  • The way we feel.
  • The way we think.
  • The way our body works.
  • The way we behave.

In order to check out whether you may be suffering from anxiety, place a tick next to those symptoms your experience regularly:

How you feel

Anxious, nervous, worried, frightened ?
Feeling, something dreadful is going to happen ?
Tense, stressed, uptight, on edge, unsettled ?
Unreal, strange, woozy, detached ?
Panicky ?

How you think

Constant worrying ?
Can't concentrate ?
Thoughts racing ?
Mind jumping from one thing to another ?
Imagining the worst and deliberating on it ?

Common thoughts

"I'm losing control" ?
"I'm cracking up" ?
"I'm going to faint" ?
My legs are going to collapse" ?
"I'm going to have a heart attack" ?
I'm going to make a fool of myself" ?
"I can't cope" ?
"I've got to get out" ?

What happens to your body

Heart pounds, races, skips a beat ?
Chest feels tight or painful ?
Tingling or numbness in toes of fingers ?
Stomach churning or "butterflies" ?
Having to go to the toilet ?
Jumpy or restless ?
Tense muscles ?
Body aching ?
Sweating ?
Breathing changes ?
Dizzy, light headed ?

What you do

Pace up and down ?
Start jobs and not finish ?
Can't sit and relax ?
On the go all of the time ?
Talking quickly or more than usual ?
Snappy and irritable behaviour ?
Drinking more ?
Smoke more ?
Eat more (or less) ?
Avoid feared situations ?

If you are regularly experiencing some or all of these symptoms, then it is likely that you are suffering from anxiety.

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is the feeling we get when our body responds to a frightening or threatening experience. It has been called the fight or flight response and is simply your body preparing for action either to fight danger or run away from it as fast as possible. The purpose of the physical symptoms of anxiety therefore is to prepare your body to cope with threat. To understand what is happening in your body, imagine that you are about to be attacked. As soon as you are aware of the threat your muscles tense ready for action. Your heart beats faster to carry blood to your muscles and brain, where it is most needed. You breath faster to provide oxygen which is needed for energy. You sweat to stop you body overheating. Your mouth becomes dry and your tummy may have butterflies. When you realise that the "attacker" is in fact a friend, the feelings die away, but you may feel shaky and weak after the experience.

The fight or flight response is a really basic system that probably goes back to the days of cave men, and is present in animals who depend on it for their survival. Fortunately, we are not often nowadays in such life or death situations, but unfortunately many of the stresses we do face can't be fought or run away from, so the symptoms don't help, in fact they often make us feel worse, especially if we don't understand them.

What causes anxiety?

There may be many reasons why someone becomes anxious. * Some people may have an anxious personality and have learned to worry. * Others may have a series of stressful life events to cope with for example bereavements, redundancy, divorce. * Others may be under pressure, at work, or home, for example, family problems, bills.

What keeps anxiety going?

Sometimes anxiety can go on and on, and become a life long problem. There can be a number of reasons for this:

  1. If someone has an anxious personality and is a worrier, then they will probably be in the habit of feeling anxious.
  2. Sometimes people have ongoing stresses over a number of years which means they develop the habit of being anxious.
  3. Vicious circle of anxiety - As the bodily symptoms of anxiety can be frightening, unusual and unpleasant, people often react by thinking that there is something physically wrong, or that something truly awful is going to happen. This in itself causes more symptoms, and so a vicious circle develops.
    • Thoughts "Now I really am in danger"
    • Feel Bodily Symptoms Anxious Heart pounding, breathing speeds up
    • Thoughts "Something awful is going to happen to me"
  4. "Fear of Fear" - Someone who has experienced anxiety in a certain situation may start to predict feeling anxious, and become frightened of the symptoms themselves, this in turn actually causes the very symptoms that are feared.

Fear of anxious symptoms coming on causes bodily symptoms

  1. Avoidance - once a vicious circle has developed with lots of anxious thoughts increasing the anxiety symptoms, avoidance is often used as a way of coping. It is natural to avoid something that is dangerous, but the sorts of things that people tend to avoid when they suffer from anxiety are most often not real dangers but busy shops, buses, crowded places, eating out, talking to people etc. Not only are these things not dangerous, but they are quite necessary. Avoiding them can make life very inconvenient and difficult. This sort of avoidance can also result in a great loss of confidence which can affect how good you feel about yourself, which in turn makes you feel more anxious - another vicious circle!.

To summarise:

Now spend a few moments trying to write down any of these ways that your anxiety may be being kept going.

How Can I Manage My Anxiety Better?

As we have learned, anxiety is not an illness and so can't be cured. If we can break into the vicious circle, however, we can learn ways of reducing our anxiety and getting it to be more manageable. We can work on at least four different areas:

  1. Understanding our anxiety better
  2. Reducing physical symptoms
  3. Altering our thoughts related to anxiety
  4. Changing our behaviours related to anxiety

What Treatment is Available for Anxiety?

Where Can I Find Help if I Think I Am Suffering From Anxiety?

First, we hope you will use the advice in this booklet. You should find it helpful. If having used the booklet you feel you need more help, you should discuss this with your GP, who will tell you about alternative treatments and local services. There are a number of self help books that other people have found helpful. These books may be available from your local library.

Helen Kennerley: Managing Anxiety.
David Burns: The Feeling Good Handbook.
Dr Clare Weeks: Self Help for your Nerves.
Susan Jeffers: Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway.

The following organisations and help lines may also be useful:

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