Anxiety

Stress is an emotional and physical response to an outside pressure. When we experience a real or imagined threat, the body's defences react automatically resulting in us either feeling like running away (flight), fighting or "freezing" ie. feeling as thought we being unable "to do anything".

A degree of stress is helpful, however for some people, some of the time, fearful ways of reacting to life become habitual and strong anxiety patterns develop. When we spend long periods of time in a highly anxious state, we begin to enter the territory of anxiety disorders, which can become very disabling, and interfere with our being able to get on with life. Long term levels of high anxiety can damage a person's health and levels of mental functioning. This type of chronic anxiety is called an anxiety disorder.

The main types of anxiety disorder are:

Social phobia or social anxiety disorder
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)
Obsessive Compulsive disorder (OCD)
Panic disorder, and
Post-traumatic stress disorder.

If you are concerned about your own anxiety levels and how you are coping with life, you can see one of the free counsellors at the University Medical and Counselling Centre.

Tips on reducing anxiety and coping with life better:

Eating regularly and avoiding caffeine helps many people to have more even moods and to be calmer. Eating low GI foods means (complex carbohydrates, proteins) that energy levels are higher and more even.
Regular exercise reduces anxiety significantly for most people. Stretching or yoga, when done mindfully also relaxes the body which then calms the mind.
Rapid breathing patterns are associated with anxiety. Doing breathing training that helps you learn to breather slower and into the abdomen often helps with chronic anxiety.
Look into training your mind to be more in the present through mindfulness exercises or meditation practice. Keeping our awareness in the present has been shown to help significantly with anxiety.
Rather than worrying on and on about something, see if you can decide to take some constructive action about it (while worrying we often think we are helping the problem but are actually doing nothing about it) and then get the mind engaged with something else (distraction).
Learn to challenge your catastrophic thoughts and replace them with something realistic.
Spend more time resting, doing things that give you genuine pleasure, and are not productive. This will reduce anxiety by resting the nervous system and usually means you are more productive when you return to tasks.

Why not try this free Worrytime APP from ReachOut - this APP helps to interrupt repetitive thinking by setting aside your worries until later, so you don't get caught up in them and can get on with your day. This means you can deal with worries once a day, rather than carrying them around with you 24/7.

If you are concerned about your own anxiety levels and how you are coping with life, you can see one of the free counsellors at the University Medical and Counselling Centre.