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Understanding and managing anxiety
Understanding and managing anxiety
By Ferdi Appelgryn, C Beyond Health
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Anxiety tends to carry negative connotations, even though it is a completely normal emotion that we all feel every now and then. Which poses the question: what is the real purpose of anxiety? It can be said that all our emotions serve us in one way or another, so perhaps feeling anxious is our bodies’ way of checking if we are prepared for any level of danger that might occur.
However, many people enjoy the experience of fear and anxiety when they participate in all sorts of activities, such as rollercoaster rides and sky diving. The interesting paradox here is the fact that there are so many people spending thousands on therapy and medication to mitigate the feeling of anxiety, yet also spending money for the sole purpose of experiencing this feeling.
So, if common anxiety and fear are not inherently bad emotions, what makes it such a negative experience? The challenge comes in when we don’t know how to get off the rollercoaster ride within ourselves; when the feeling is experienced unintentionally. In order to make sense of this paradox, we need to know what the possible causes of anxiety are.
Anxiety manifests in a variety of ways and can have multiple triggers for different people; however, the event itself is seldom what causes our experience of anxious feelings. The thoughts that go along with anxiety are generally future-oriented – we worry about our health, relationships, success and other outcomes.
We can even mistakenly believe that our anxious thoughts are helpful in preventing these undesired outcomes, but anxiety feeds itself – we worry a little, we get stuck in our anxious thoughts and we end up worrying even more. Then we experience more of the bodily changes that go along with anxiety. These can be intense and can easily be mistaken for other illnesses, which may explain why people with anxiety tend to go to the doctor more often than others.
Good news, though. There are many ways, supported by research, to reduce and manage anxiety, perhaps making anxiety more “treatable” than any other mental health challenges. So what could we do when we’re right in the middle of an anxiety attack and need a fast-acting anxiety stopper?
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