ANXIETY

Anxiety today can usually be considered an unwanted by-product of our instinctive survival mechanism we call “fight or flight”. When we are dealing with a stressful event or situation today, our mind senses the stress we are experiencing and activates the “fight or flight” response in our body, triggering the release of hormones providing a rapid increase in energy in our muscles. It also reduces the normal operation of other body and mind functions not deemed necessary for “fight or flight”. This worked well when we were facing life or death situations. But most situations we experience today are not the life-threatening ones the mechanism was designed to protect us from.

Think of a car sitting at a red light with your foot solidly on the brake. Now you are stressed by something and you floor the gas pedal while at the same time keeping the brake on. The engine revs up and tries to go but there is nowhere to go with the brake on, so it sits there racing with all that energy trapped in place.

This is similar to our bodies when we get stressed and our mind dumps the fuel from hormones into our bodies but there isn’t a live threatening event to fight. Our bodies just keep all that energy locked inside and it creates internal anxiety responses.

Anxiety exhibits in a variety of general symptoms including sleep disturbance, restlessness, muscle tension, fatigue, irritability, and difficulty concentrating.

Some more specific symptoms include overthinking, ruminating, headaches chest pain, dizziness, faster breathing, nausea, fast or irregular heartbeat and teeth grinding.

Contact us to schedule your complimentary consultation to learn more about how you can recognize the anxiety you may be experiencing, discover ways to reduce your automatic response to stress and take back control of that part of your life.