Anxiety

Anxiety is one of the most common reasons people come to counselling. It can affect all areas of everyday life, relationships, work, family, college, school, friendships, sleep and confidence.

Symptoms of anxiety can show up in many ways. Symptoms may include excessive worry, a sense of panic that something bad is going to happen, irritability, spiralling and catastrophic thinking. Physical symptoms of anxiety may include, tense muscles, sweating and rushes of heat across your body, holding breath, trouble sleeping, dizziness, continual sense of tiredness, stomach aches and headaches.

Sometimes these anxious feeling can lead to an anxiety disorder such as Post Traumatic Shock Disorder (PTSD), Separation Anxiety Disorder. It may a disorder about specific things, like social interactions, illness and germs, flying, spiders etc.

Anxiety can sometimes bring intrusive thoughts which are persistent and compulsions which are behaviours to try and manage these thoughts.
For example, thought “I am going to lose my job.” Compulsion to manage the thought “ I will always wash my hands 10 times to stop this happening.”

This is called Obsessive Compulsion Disorder, living with OCD can make it very difficult to go about everyday life as the thoughts and compulsions begin to take over life. Some people with anxiety experience panic attacks which are an intense episode of fear, where the person will feel immensely strong physical symptoms such as chest pain, rapid heartbeat or/and struggling to breath. Panic attacks bring with them not only the fear when experiencing them but also a worry for the person experiencing them of when might the next episode happen and how will they manage it.
If you are experiencing anxiety, you are not alone the charity MIND report 1 in 4 people experience a mental health problem.