Everyone experiences feelings of anxiety from time to time when doing things like public speaking, a job interview, or starting a new job or school. Anxiety is the body’s emotional response to stress and can manifest as fear or nervousness about the future. While it is normal to experience anxiety occasionally, prolonged or recurring feelings of anxiety can indicate the presence of an anxiety disorder.
Anxiety can feel like:
- Nervousness
- Muscle tension or twitching
- Unable to sit still
- Racing heartbeat
- You can’t breath
- Obsessive and/or intrusive thoughts
- Not being able to sleep at night
- Sweating when it’s not hot
- Trembling when it’s not cold
- You’re in danger
- Your stomach hurts
- You want to avoid certain situations
Panic can feel like:
- Choking sensation
- Feeling hot or cold
- Chest pain
- Numbness or tingling
- Shaking or trembling
- Sweating
- Heart palpitations
- Nausea or stomach problems
- Feelings of detachment
- Shortness of breath
- Tightness in the chest
- Feeling a loss of control
- Fear of dying
Concerned parents of children, teens and adolescents might have a difficult time assessing when their child’s anxiety is normal and when to be concerned. Some of the things to look out for are…
- Avoidance of specific activities, situations or people
- A tendency to worry about what can go wrong in any scenario
- Worries or fears that interfere with normal daily activities
- Persistent distress despite an adult’s reassurances
- Trouble sleeping at night or insisting on sleeping with parents
- Physical symptoms, such as headaches or stomach pain, that don’t stem from other medical conditions.
Why does therapy work?
Therapy isn’t about venting or providing a quick fix; it’s about working through your problems to find effective, long-term solutions. Among other things, a reputable course of therapy provides you with:
Self-awareness
A big part of therapy is seeking out the root cause of your problems. By unearthing and resolving long-standing issues, you can start to conquer the sources of your anxiety or depression and gain insight into why things are the way they are.
Healthy habits
Therapy teaches you to change your negative thought patterns and replace them with healthy, productive ones. Additionally, you learn to establish new habits that support a healthy lifestyle.
Coping skills
To deal with the onset of symptoms, or to avoid symptoms before they start, you’ll need to develop some ways to cope with the stress and anxiety of daily living. Therapy helps to identify skills that will work for you.
We work with clients to understand that their emotional experience is coming from their lower brain where the limbic system lives. This part of our brain was designed to protect us from danger. What happens when we experience anxiety is usually that the limbic system is perceiving danger where danger does not actually exist. Whether the struggle is a specific phobia, social anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder, or OCD we can help you to learn to relate to your thinking differently to achieve emotional relief.