Are You Feeling Anxious?

The statistics say Anxiety affects one in ten people at some point in their life.  I would even say it affects at least 3-4 in ten people.  Anxiety is feeling uncertain, tense, fearful and frightened.

Symptoms of anxiety: Hear racing or skipping beats, frequent urination, sweating, butterfly/tense/knotted tummy, tense muscles, shortness of breath, dry mouth or throat, shaking, numbness, check/head/neck pain, clenched jaw.

We can all experience some form of anxiety at different stages of our lives e.g coming up to exams, starting a new job, going into hospital, doing something outside your comfort zone and so on. A number of hormones are released by the body to adapt to the situation known as fight or flight response, these hormones include adrenaline,nor adrenaline, cortisol, plus others. At this point as our defensive stimuli are in operation our physical reactions such as digestion shuts down, blood pressure rises, breathing becomes altered, faster and shallower. This is a natural healthy response. When this is continuous or prolonged long after the incident has passed the body becomes depleted of nutrients, our immune system gets worn down, sleep becomes deprived, meals patterns can be altered or skipped

altogether, our adrenal glands become burned out, we constantly feel exhausted and

so on.

The body never gets to relax. It is on high alert all of the time. This is known as the stress response state. All of this can have a detrimental effect on your overall health and wellness. To deal with the anxiety many also live altered lifestyles avoiding stressful situations or triggers for their anxiety. This can cause and create many limitations in life and certainly you will not be able to live a normal balanced lifestyle. Avoiding the issue can help short term, longterm it leads onto other complications. In fact the feelings of having to avoid the issues can then become addictive and a habit that needs to be fed constantly.

In turn this leads onto further anxiety and stress in the body. The brain then creates patterns and past associations so then it becomes difficult to identify clearly the actual triggers or causes and over time you may feel like the majority of the time. The good news this is something that can be very easily treated when done so with building the persons self-esteem and treating the root cause of the problem to begin with. For severe cases shorter medication can be very helpful if a severe trauma or something like that has been experienced, however medication alone will not treat the underlying cause and therefore over time the person can become dependent on the medication.

The majority of anxiety comes from the way we think or the way we have been conditioned as children, our beliefs and our values. We can grow up with fear and then as adults carry that on through in

our everyday lives and find it hard to cope. Working in this area gives me the greatest of pleasures as how it can transform peoples lives is incredible when the situation or scenario is turned upside down.The key is to identify the cause of the stress and help restore the bodies natural coping mechanisms back to health and boost self confidence with ultra doses of self-love and kindness.