Anxiety

Book now

  • Anxiety is the body’s natural response to a feared stimulus. Evolutionarily, this response helped keep humans safe by getting them ready to act when there was a dangerous situation. Anxiety helped the body enter into the fight/flight/freeze mode, which would help us respond to threats.

    In our modern-day context, anxiety is still a normal and adaptive response to certain situations. However, this can become a problem if anxiety is preventing us from doing things that we wish to do.

    For example, if there was an individual who wished to expand their social circle but felt anxiety when entering into social situations and thus avoided them. This could potentially be seen as a pathological response as the anxiety is preventing the person from getting what they want in life.

  • Each individual is different and can experience different symptoms of anxiety. Typically, most people would likely experience some of the following;

    • Worry that is uncontrollable

    • Feeling on edge

    • Difficulty concentrating

    • Avoiding the feared situation/stimulus

    • Rapid heartbeat/tightness in chest

    • Shortness of breath

    • Dizziness

    • Headaches

    • Tingling

    • Upset stomach

    • Butterflies in the tummy

    • Muscle tension, aches, soreness

    • Excessive sweating

    • Dry mouth

    • Sleep disturbance

    • Panic attacks (intense period of fear/terror)

    • Social withdrawal

  • Anxiety disorders impact approximately 17% of the population within the past 12 months. More generally, across the lifespan, approximately 25% of people will have experienced an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives.

  • There are many types of anxiety disorders. Those listed in the DSM-V-TR (the manual used to diagnose these conditions) are;

    • Separation anxiety disorder - typically impacts children when separating from a caregiver. Characterised by fears that something terrible will happen to their caregiver.

    • Selective mutism - characterised by a failure to speak in social situations where there is an expectation of speaking. This typically presents in childhood.

    • Generalised anxiety disorder - characterised by excessive worry that is difficult to control. Three of the following symptoms are required;

      • Restlessness/feeling keyed up or on edge

      • Easily fatigued

      • Difficulty concentrating

      • Irritability

      • Muscle tension

      • Sleep disturbance

    • Specific phobia - fear about a specific stimulus or situation. Typically the individual will avoid the stimulus or situation that elicits the fear.

    • Social anxiety disorder - fear of social situations in which the individual may be judged by others. The individual predicts that they may display evident anxiety symptoms.

    • Obsessive compulsive disorder

    • Panic disorder - recurrent panic attacks (i.e., intense and acute fear response) and subsequent fear of further panic attacks.

    • Agoraphobia - fear of two or more of the following;

      • using public transport

      • being in open spaces

      • being in enclosed spaces

      • standing in line or being in a crowd

      • being outside the home

  • In general, anxiety is perpetuated through anxious thinking, avoidance/reassurance seeking, and a focus on anxiety symptoms.

    Anxious thinking would involve predicting that a terrible thing is going to happen and that IF that thing occurred, the outcome would be catastrophic.

    Avoidance involves avoiding the feared stimulus, while reassurance seeking might involve checking with others whether the individual will be ok in the feared situation.

    Finally, focus on anxiety symptoms typically triggers anxiety about anxiety, thus snowball like effect with the feeling of anxiety.

  • Anxiety is typically treated by examining thinking patterns and looking for anxious thoughts. Once identified there are several strategies that can be employed to either change thinking or reduce the hold that these anxious thoughts have on the individual.

    Next, the behavioural component of anxiety will be addressed. This typically involves being exposed to the feared stimulus in a way that is controlled and safe. There will be some discomfort while exposure occurs, however, a well-designed exposure task will ensure that the fear level is tolerable. Over time, as the individual completes exposure tasks, they typically find that their anxiety levels decrease with respect to the feared stimulus.