Anxiety & Stress

Where does Anxiety originate?

The origins of stress and anxiety are the mind’s natural reaction to fear and change.

Some people who suffer with stress can identify the cause but other people will have a continual sense of anxiety.

Our subconscious is responsible for our survival which it does by triggering our fight or flight response mechanism. This happens when we feel threatened or when we believe we feel threatened. The subconscious creates these feelings by employing, arousing and inhabiting neurotransmitters in our brains that can excite or calm us.

In situations of fear or change we decide if we need to run away or fight. We now live in a world that creates pressure and we have little time for or knowledge about how to relax. Anxiety is the feeling, or more correctly the feelings that we get when we feel apprehension or fear and can be evident when we are subjected to long term stress or when we feel threatened by something or someone else.

Feelings of anxiety can distort our belief system and the subconscious may avoid situations as a result. Anxiety will affect our whole wellbeing, our emotions, our behaviour and our physical health.

We can find ourselves persistently avoiding situations and/or having negative thoughts. Anxiety can be a precursor to depression. Anxiety becomes a problem when it interferes with a person’s normal, day to day life.

Physical symptoms can include trembling, tense muscles, nausea, diarrhoea, headache, backache, heart palpitations, sweating and numbness.

The relationship between stress and anxiety

Feelings of stress come from any situation in which we feel frustrated, angry or anxious.

Feelings of anxiety come from apprehension or fear of which the source is not always recognisable. Often when we are stressed we carry on regardless, using external and internal coping strategies including denial. Your therapist will help you draw a new map and have a new understanding of the conditions or situations to enable you to move forward from previous negative programming to a more positive one.

Some people deal with stress better than others. There may be a genetic element and/or environmental factors involved in creating stress. Fortunately, people can be taught strategies to deal with stress and anxiety better and to recognise triggers successfully. Every person experiences stress and stressors in their life but anxiety is a diagnosed condition.

There are different types of stress such as hypo stress, when a person is bored and lacking in motivation. Distress which is a short term stress that gives us the strength we need to finish a task

acute stress

Acute stress which is what we identify with stress and can be shown through physical disturbances and tension.

People can be affected both mentally and physically. Physiological changes can include depression or anxiety, sleep disturbances such as insomnia and also sexual dysfunction. Stress can be a precursor to anxiety which in turn can be a precursor to depression.

Some anxiety in life is normal and at times it can even be helpful. However, persistent worries and fears can produce a variety of symptoms. Anxiety can produce restlessness, fatigue, impaired concentration, irritability, muscle tension and impaired sleep.

Counselling for anxiety can help by starting to challenge thoughts, feelings and behaviours to change any self-limiting beliefs or habits you may have. It will give you the opportunity to talk through what is needed or helpful in your life and what isn’t. Counselling may look at your past to see where these thoughts, feelings and behaviours may have come from and be able to spot any patterns. During your counselling sessions we will look at how we can change the present to move forward. Counselling will help you to address your internal dialogue which will enable you to change negative self-talk into positive self-talk.

Stress

About 75% of all time lost in the workplace is stress related (Covey,s.r 1989). Up to 90% of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress related complaints (Perkins 1994). Life today is on average 44% more difficult than 30 years ago based on the number of significant life changes encountered (Dryer 1996)

Stress symptoms;

Increased respiration
Increased heart rate
Raised blood pressure
Blood can be changed away from the digestive tract and be experienced as dry mouth and reduction in saliva produced.
The liver releases energy giving sugars so we see a rise in blood sugar and cholesterol
Flight, fight or freeze mechanism from adrenaline being released.
Headaches
Teeth grinding
Aching jaw
Muscle spasms
Aches in shoulders, neck and back
Pacing and fidgeting
Nervous behaviours
Rushing constantly
Talking fast
Hyperventilation
Palpitations
Ulcers
Crying
Inability to relax
Constant fatigue
Indigestion
Loss of ability at work
Recklessness
Reliance on smoking or alcohol

Counselling can be an invaluable resource to help you to manage or limit the stress within your life. It can help you address patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours and turn your negatives into positives. Although some stress can be good within our lives it is important to examine what is helpful and what has become an unhelpful way to live our lives. How we handle stress may be a learned behaviour reinforced by repeating that particular way of behaving again and again. By starting to reinforce more helpful styles we can adjust our thoughts, feelings and behaviours into positive ones enabling us to move forward.