Anxiety tests coping mechanisms
Anxiety is inevitable in our daily lives. Bosses, budgets, audiences, examinations, standing in line, and waiting are not life-threatening, even though we perceive them to be at any point in time. Anxiety is a normal response to a perceived threat. Anxiety affects the whole being, psychological, physical and behavioral. Anxiety triggers unpleasant mental symptoms, such as helplessness, confusion, apprehension, worry and repeated negative thoughts. Anxiety also triggers physical symptoms ranging from muscle tension to a pounding heart. The unsettling feelings, such as uneasiness, agitation, dread, fear, panic and terror often provoke an individual to seek relief either by attempting to master the feelings or by avoidance or escape from the anxiety-producing situation.
Smaller stressors and brief periods of anxiety can add up to hundreds a day and are hardly noticed. If you work in an office, anxiety can accumulate with every ring of the telephone, every text, every email and every meeting that is squeezed into the day. If you are a homemaker, all the endless tasks you must do to keep the family on track can add up just as quickly. And, if you are a student, the pressures of classwork, homework, tests, friendships, sports, and afterschool activities can seem overwhelming at times.
How a person interprets and labels events/situations can serve to either relax them or cause anxiety. When an individual interprets a situation negatively, they begin feeling anxious, and as a result, the boy’s autonomic nervous system triggers a “fight or flight” response, which prepares the body to fight or flee from the anxiety-producing threat. Our body then triggers an automatic physical response: increased/rapid breathing; muscle tension; shakiness; racing heart; lump in throat; light- headedness; sweaty palms; hot/cold flashes; tightness in chest; dry mouth; butterflies in stomach; feeling of doom, dread, and danger, among others.
Everyone has experienced some/all of these feelings at one time or another, but “normal anxiety” is a response to a stressful event. What makes anxiety the grounds for a disorder is that the anxiety is so strong and intense that it interferes with everyday functioning. For example, an individual who experiences a panic attack, which is a sudden, intense onset of the symptoms above, would have an overreaction or exaggerated reaction of “fight or flight.” The symptoms may not go away as quickly and may interfere with a person’s ability to carry on with their daily activities and responsibilities. For chronic sufferers, the anxiety takes on a life of its own, becomes uncontrollable, lasts for a longer time, and happens in non-lifethreatening circumstances.
It is important that an individual recognizes what creates the level of anxiety in their life and their reaction to it. By learning and using relaxation and mindfulness techniques regularly throughout the day, an individual can ease this anxiety.
Here are some techniques a person may want to consider: proper nutrition – limiting daily caffeine, sugar, salt and alcohol intake; setting limits to what can be done in one day and organizing our day; deep breathing techniques; progressive muscle relaxation – relaxing our muscles head to toe…or scanning our body for where tension lies and relaxing muscles through slow, methodical stretching; meditation; positive self-talk; visual imagery – using imagination to create pleasurable pictures in our mind; exercise; yoga; humor/laughter; focusing on our senses to create relaxation such as aromatherapy – using our sense of smell to relax; hydrotherapy – use of water to relax our body; massage therapy; listening to music or relaxing sounds; engaging someone to spend time talking; and many others.
Please remember that all anxiety is not necessarily harmful. Anxiety may be a source of motivation, creativity, and offer opportunity and challenges that can enrich pleasurable activities. There is a difference between life’s thrills and its overwhelming anxieties.
It is up to each one of us to recognize our anxiety and use the best, individualized coping techniques to allow ourselves to manage our day so that we can be the most stress-free, healthiest and most productive person that we can be.