What is anxiety, anyway?

Plainly put, anxiety happens when our nervous system is in overdrive. We may receive a stressful email from someone and before we know it, our body responds as if it is being chased by a tiger.

Sometimes it shows up in the form of a racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, ringing in the ears, or sudden sweat. It may be difficult to slow down our thoughts and those thoughts may keep us up at night. It can show up as little worries or as tightness in the chest and a feeling of impending doom. Unpleasant to say the least.

Generally, anxiety is based in fear and is a primal response to threats to safety. For centuries, anxiety played a vital role in humans literally staying alive. “Fight or flight” wasn’t just a catch phrase; people literally either had to fight back against predators or run for their lives. The problem is sometimes anxiety glitches and makes our bodies perceive lots of things as threats to our safety and often inappropriately so.

When that happens, we start to see it take root and the symptoms become prolonged over time. Instead of a twenty minute spike of anxiety that occurred during a close call in rush hour traffic dying down and settling the nervous system back into its baseline, that anxiety may continue for hours, days or weeks on end. When this happens, the nervous system doesn’t get a break and we might begin to notice that many (often innocuous) things begin to set someone off, or panic might set in, or traumatic memories come back from the past as if they’re occurring in the here and now. That’s when we start to notice a problem that may need some help getting back on track. It isn’t healthy to be in a constant state of high alert. Anxiety is correlated to high cortisol, which causes all sorts of physical health problems. It’s okay to reach out and seek help to manage these symptoms.

Is anxiety keeping you up at night? Contact Us