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Anxiety Treatment
How Anxiety Works
What is Anxiety
Anxiety is the feeling of being afraid or unsafe; it is the emotion that can lead to the “fight, flight or freeze” response. It has most likely helped humans survive as a species by keeping us alive. We can feel anxious about almost anything in our lives: our work, education, relationships, or our performance task. It is related to responses in our body, the way we think, and the way we behave.
What Does Anxiety Look Like?
When we feel threatened, our body gets ready to deal with the threat. It either fights it off (fight), runs away (flight), or avoids being noticed (freeze). We feel it in our bodies in many ways: our heart-rate or breathing get faster; our chest or stomach gets tight; we feel sick or our muscles tense and our hands/legs shake.
It influences the way we think; it makes us want to avoid situations or look for threats; at extreme levels of fear, it makes our minds freeze up or shut down (freeze/dissociation), or feel foggy (derealisation). It can paralyse our decision-making process, so we feel stuck.
Anxiety is often accompanied by depression and other forms of stress.
Do I Need to Deal With My Anxiety, and What Can Be Done About It?
Anxiety is a natural part of human experience. Almost everybody feels anxious sometimes. Anxiety becomes a problem when it prevents us meeting our goals. If anxiety is causing difficulties in any important part of your life, effective, evidence-based treatment is available. Treatment involves understanding your anxiety, challenging it, and learning to cope with it.
For self-help, have a look at the Centre for Clinical Interventions resources.
Is Anxiety Causing Difficulties For You?
Schedule an appointment to start taking control of your anxiety today.