Anxious

Understanding Anxiety

Anxiety is a natural emotion that everyone experiences from time to time. It’s a feeling of unease, worry, or fear that can be caused by various things. For example, you may feel your anxiety levels rise before a new situation, an upcoming event, or a change in circumstances. It is important to remember that feelings and symptoms of anxiety are a common human experience, and it does not mean there is something wrong with you.

However, anxiety can become a problem if it starts to interfere with your daily life and you begin to experience anxiety and panic attacks. If you are constantly worrying about things out of your control, feeling irritable or restless and having trouble sleeping, it may be a sign that you are experiencing anxiety.

You may begin wondering “why do I feel anxious all the time?” and experience signs and symptoms of panic disorder or stress associated with anxiety. You may also be feeling stressed or overwhelmed as you try to deal with your symptoms of anxiety.

If you are feeling like your symptoms of anxiety are beginning to consume you and impact everyday life, it is essential that you seek mental health support for help with anxiety. Getting support may seem daunting, but at Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Talking Therapies, we are here to help you and give you the support you need.

What are the different types of anxiety?

Experiencing anxiety and dealing with anxiety symptoms is different for everyone. It is a mental health condition that affects people in different ways, and there are several different types of anxiety disorders which you could be diagnosed with. These include:

• Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD): the main symptom of generalised anxiety disorder, or GAD, is feelings of worry or stress that affect your daily life and are difficult to control.
• Panic disorder and agoraphobia: panic disorder is the most severe form of anxiety, and it may lead to you avoiding certain situations because you fear they will trigger a panic attack. Agoraphobia is a fear of being in situations where escape might be difficult, so you may avoid travelling on public transport or in some severe cases, leaving home.
• Social anxiety: a long-term and overwhelming fear of social situations, social anxiety can affect everyday activities, self-confidence, relationships and work or school life. You may worry about speaking on the phone, doing something you think is embarrassing or fear being criticised.
• Health anxiety: related to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), health anxiety is when you spend so much time worrying you are ill or going to get ill, that it begins taking over your daily life. You may constantly worry about your health, frequently check your body for signs of illness, worry that a doctor has missed something or obsessively look at health information online.
• Phobias: an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal, phobias develop when someone has an exaggerated or unrealistic sense of danger about a situation or object. If a phobia becomes severe, you may organise your life around the thing that causes you anxiety, restricting daily life and causing extreme distress.

It is common to have more than one type of anxiety at the same time, For example, you may have generalised anxiety disorder or social anxiety and also experience panic attacks. You may have a certain phobia which links to your feelings of panic.

What are the causes of anxiety?

There are many factors that con contribute to anxiety, like generalised anxiety disorder, including your genetics, environment and life experiences. For example, if you have a family history of mental health issues including anxiety disorders, ranging from generalised anxiety disorder to social anxiety you may be more likely to develop one yourself.

Other causes of anxiety can include:

• Social isolation, like the bereavement and grief, being unemployed, living with a long term condition or being LGBTQ+
• Childhood trauma, like physical, emotional or sexual abuse or neglect
• Negative life events, like divorce, domestic abuse or exposure to a stressful environment
• Societal pressures, like expectations and gender and financial status
• Current life situation, like money problems, housing issues or unemployed
• Physical and mental health problems, like a serious, ongoing physical health condition or experiencing depression, which can cause you to also develop anxiety

You may also suffer from an anxiety disorder if you are dealing with PTSD after a traumatic event, like a car crash, being assaulted, sexually assaulted or abused. Certain types of talking therapies, like Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), are available to support people with PTSD.

Gender can also play a role in causing anxiety. In fact, women are almost twice as likely to experience anxiety than men, however, men’s mental health is a taboo subject and with 50% of men experiencing poor mental health at one time or another, including anxiety, it is important that we encourage men to talk about their mental health as much as we encourage women.

If you ever ask yourself “why do I feel anxious all the time?”, it is important that you identify the causes of your anxiety to help you move forward with your life. You can access self-help resources or access existing webinars to support you, but you can also self-refer to our talking therapies service to receive support from an experienced therapist.

At Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Talking Therapies, we are here to help everyone with their mental health condition, including anxiety disorders.

What are the symptoms of anxiety?

Symptoms of anxiety can vary from person to person, and can differ depending on the type of anxiety disorder you are experiencing. Typically, however, symptoms of anxiety are often common between each type, and consist of physical and mental symptoms.

Physical symptoms of anxiety disorders include:

• Faster or irregular heartbeat
• Feeling lightheaded or dizzy
• Headaches
• Chest pains
• Sweating
• Loss of appetite
• Breathlessness
• Feeling hot
• Shaking

Mental symptoms of anxiety disorders include:

• Feeling tense or nervous
• Being unable to relax
• Worrying about the past or the future
• Not being able to sleep
• Difficulty concentrating
• Fear of the worst happening
• Intrusive traumatic memories

If you are experiencing a panic attack related to an anxiety disorder, you may experience symptoms of feeling faint, dizzy or lightheaded, sweating or shaking, shortness of breath or breathing very quickly, a tingling feeling in your fingers or lips or feeling sick.

A panic attack usually lasts between five and 30 minutes, and even though they can be frightening, they aren’t dangerous and shouldn’t harm you.

What support is available for anxiety?

Dealing with symptoms of anxiety can be daunting and it can feel like anxiety is ruining your life. However, anxiety is manageable with talking therapies.

At Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Talking Therapies, we offer a range of services to support you with coping with and managing your anxiety. These services include Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Counselling for Depression, Interpersonal Therapy and VR Phobia Therapy,

We also offer mindfulness-based programmes and a Healthy Living Healthy Minds programme, and provide employment support for anyone undergoing talking therapies who is out of work.

If you are struggling to cope with your anxiety and feel it is impacting your daily life, it’s important to seek help as soon as possible. With the right treatment, support and guidance from a mental health professional, you can manage your anxiety and live a full and happy life.

It’s easy to self-refer to our services. Using our online referral assistant is the fastest way to access support, but you can also be referred by a GP or other healthcare professional, or call us on 0333 188 1060. Our friendly team can help advise which of our services is best for you.

If you are in a mental health crisis and need help immediately, then get urgent help now.

As part of our webinar series, we’ve included a specific episode on anxiety you can face when returning to work. You can find this webinar below.