Anxiety is defined as an emotion people feel that makes them worried and feel tense. It’s commonly accompanied by an increase in blood pressure. Most people, if not all, have experienced anxiety in their life. It can be due to a lot of things such as trauma or stress build-up that seems to be too much for us to take.
However, while some people are only experiencing episodes of anxiety, some may be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. This happens when there are too many intense episodes of anxiety that doesn’t seem to be normal at all. This can turn into panic attacks that may interfere with daily activities and could be difficult to control. It can affect your relationships, your job, and you won’t be able to do your daily activities with complete ease, like making an omelet for the morning. People who have anxiety disorder would also experience excessive stress before starting a task or they may even have a fear of doing them.
If you’re experiencing intense and frequent anxiety, and a talk with a family or friend isn’t helpful, you might ask yourself this question, “do you need anxiety counseling?”
If your anxieties are happening for the majority of your days and it has greatly affected your life in an awful way, you should seek professional help immediately.
To determine if you’re suffering from anxiety, here are some things that you need to look out for:
- Difficulty Relaxing
This is often seen as a clear sign of anxiety, especially when you’re having trouble relaxing. When you’re feeling anxious, you’re most likely to feel jittery to the point that you find it difficult to put yourself at ease. When this happens, you should try to practice different relaxation techniques to help ease the tension that you’re feeling and put you back into a regular state.
You could try yoga, massage therapy, aromatherapy, meditation, deep breathing, etc. Relaxation techniques are designed to help you feel at ease that relieves you from anxiety, stress, and anger. Whenever you’re feeling anxious, try to do a couple of relaxation exercises. Hopefully, it may help you feel better.
- Intense Worrying
This is one of the most common signs that you’re suffering from anxiety. If this happens, it’s best to talk to a friend or family member that could try to help ease up your tension.
When you’re anxious, it’s most likely that you cannot stop worrying about a certain event in your life that had happened or you’re anticipating to happen. It could be about your grades coming up, a big presentation coming, lack of money, or anything that greatly affects your life.
As difficult as it may sound, try to take your mind of the problems that you’re intensively worried about. You could try to do fun physical activities like playing sports, painting, going to the park, cooking, or anything that you truly enjoy and try to take things lighter than they’re supposed to.
- Difficulty Concentrating
When you’re feeling anxious, it’s most likely that you have trouble concentrating because your mind is extensively focused on your worries rather than the normal activities of your life. You could have difficulty answering an exam, working in your office, or even reading a book.
Understandably, it’s hard to take off your mind with your worries. But with a little breathing exercise, you should be able to feel relaxed. In cases where you just can’t stop feeling anxious even with a lot of exercises that you’ve done, it’s best to consult with a professional to help you out since you might be suffering from an anxiety disorder.
- Trouble Falling and Staying Asleep
If your mind is constantly running that it cannot put itself at ease, you’re most likely to be suffering from anxiety. When you’re suffering from anxiety, you may find it difficult to fall asleep as you’re worrying too much. Your mind just keeps on running and thinking of the same things over and over again. As too much worrying wouldn’t help solve your problems, it just seems to be difficult getting out of it.
When you’re having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep since you’re suffering from anxiety, you could try to diffuse lavender into your room. You could also try to take a long and warm relaxing bath that’s infused with lavender oils. This allows the aroma to spread into your body, allowing you to feel relaxed and at ease. You could also try using a sound machine and play white noise or some relaxing tunes, such as rain forest or ocean waves, that might help you to fall asleep.
- Easily Startled
When you jumped out of your seat while you’re watching a scary movie, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re suffering from anxiety. It just simply means that you’re scared of the movie and are too focused on the event.
However, when you get startled easily extensively, this might be a sign that you’re suffering from anxiety. It can be defined as the feeling of constantly being on the edge that you always feel uneasy.
Take note that being easily startled and having to experience restlessness isn’t enough to be diagnosed as anxiety but it can be a symptom, especially when it occurs frequently.
- Trembling
Trembling might not be a clear diagnosis of someone suffering from anxiety, but it could be one of the greatest symptoms as well.
Trembling is mostly accompanied by shaking and the inability to stop themselves from having it. This happens when you’re having an anxiety attack that you cannot stop yourself from worrying and it shows with how you move as well.
Tremors can be more extensive when someone is at ease, resting, and trying to falling asleep.
- Panic Attacks
When you’re at the peak of your anxiety, you’re most likely to be experiencing a series of panic attacks.
A panic attack happens when you’re having the feeling of sudden fear that it shows extensively with your physical actions when there’s completely no real danger or apparent cause at all. Having to experience panic attacks might be dangerous as it can cause harm to yourself or the people around you.
When you’re suffering from a panic attack, you’re most likely to experience chest tightness, shaking, sweating, rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, nausea, fear of dying, or fear of losing control.
Panic attacks may be normal for some people, but if it happens too frequently and unexpectedly, it’s best to consult with a professional since it could be a sign of a panic disorder.
- Avoids Social Situation
Having to rest from the crowd is normal. You don’t need to socialize every time and may want a little time for yourself. But when you’re constantly avoiding social events for the fear of getting into one, you might be suffering from anxiety.
Signs that you’re suffering from anxiety that makes you want to avoid social situation includes:
- Constantly afraid of being embarrassed or humiliated by other people when you don’t even know how the event will go.
- Frequently thinking of any events that could happen that would be uncomfortable for you.
- Worried that you might get judged or criticized for any part of your life.
- Feeling anxious and fearful of upcoming events and have the constant need to think about what’ll happen next.
When you’re this person, you might be suffering from a social anxiety disorder and might need to seek professional help to get you back into socializing.
If you’re simply just not a social person, that’s completely fine. You just have to be sure that you’re not feeling any extreme fears and anxiousness when bumping into other people.
- Overreaction to Stress
If you find yourself over-preparing when there’s a storm coming up, it could be a sign of anxiety. While preparing for a storm is a great thing to do, but if you’re overly-preparing for light rain that you hoard a ton of dried foods, evacuate immediately, and constantly pushing people to do the same, you might be suffering from anxiety.
When there’s a certain event that doesn’t go according to your plan, you tend to overreact. It could be a birthday cake that has a different flavor from what you ordered, a friend not being able to come on a night out, or even just a simple spill of coffee.
While it’s hard to get your mind off of it, it never hurts to try. You could try to distract yourself by doing some fun activities, you could go for relaxation exercises, or take a warm and relaxing bath.
- Nausea
While you’re feeling anxious, it’s most likely to be accompanied by nausea. This happens when you cannot stop thinking about a certain even in your life to the point that you feel your stomach twisting every single minute spent being anxious.
Do you remember the feeling of nausea when you’re next on the stage with your presentation or something that you’re nervous about? That’s the same effect when you’re experiencing anxiety.
Nausea occurs when you’re feeling stress, fearful, and anxious. As it may seem to be a far connection from happening, it’s still a possibility. During an event of anxiety, it might cause your body to function abnormally, resulting in nausea.
- Irritability
It has been known that people who are suffering from anxiety are prone to being irritable a lot more than those who don’t.
Irritability happens when a person who’s constantly worrying wants to focus on the problem being tackled but can’t manage to solve it right away. With extensive worrying, you may want to occupy yourself without having other people to distract you or suggest unhelpful opinions. You may want to extensively focus on the idea of resolving any issues as it might relieve you from anxiety, thus the higher chances of irritability.
- Fatigue
Take note that just because you’re feeling fatigued doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re suffering from anxiety. It could be a lot of things so don’t close your doors with anxiety alone.
However, having anxiety attacks can be accompanied by fatigue as well. It’s unclear how fatigue is related to anxiety as it could be because of the stress, insomnia, or muscle tension that a person is feeling while experiencing anxiety.
When To Seek Professional Help
If you’ve been feeling anxious frequently over the past 6 months, even with the smallest events in your life, you may want to seek professional help as you might be suffering from an anxiety disorder.
This is most especially needed when most of your days are spent being anxious rather than taking life steady and slow. Whether you’re feeling anxious for a long or short time, if it’s already interfering with your life, immediate professional help is a must. By going to a professional, your anxiety can be addressed early on, preventing you from doing further damage.
How To Manage Anxiety
There are a ton of ways on how you can minimize the possibility of experiencing anxiety such as:
- Keeping a healthy diet
- Exercise regularly
- Yoga
- Meditation
- Quit smoking
- Abstain from alcohol
- Limit caffeine intake
- Consume probiotics and fermented foods
Conclusion
Feeling anxious is a normal part of a person’s life and shouldn’t be taken lightly as it could lead to a disorder. When you’re suffering from anxiety, you should try to snatch yourself away from the situation and try to be relaxed as much as you can.
There are a ton of relaxation exercises that you could practice at home or alone that might help relieve you from stress. Along with this, if you know that you’re more prone to having anxiety attacks, you should do preventive measures to keep them from happening. A talk with a supportive family or friend would never hurt as long as you try to help yourself as well. Always try to support your mental health and never ignore it.
You should try to free yourself from anxiety no matter how hard it could be. When you know that self-medication won’t help, never be afraid and embarrassed to seek medical help as it’ll benefit you in the long run.
Author: Mandy Kloppers
Mandy is a qualified therapist who treats depression, anxiety, OCD, PTSD, trauma, and many other types of mental health issues. She provides online therapy around the world for those needing support and also provides relationship counselling.
