Anxiety

Anxiety is an ongoing feeling of worry, dread, and a sense of impeding danger that interferes with daily life. It is often accompanied by persistent worried thoughts about feared future events and attempts to avoid both the feared event and any reminders of anxiety-provoking places, people, or things. Several types of anxiety include (but are not limited to):

• Social anxiety
• Health anxiety
• Test-taking anxiety
• School anxiety
• Separation anxiety
• Generalized anxiety
• Environmental Anxiety
• Existential Anxiety
• Relationship Anxiety
• Public Speaking Anxiety/Presentation Anxiety

Signs and symptoms of Anxiety

Anxiety has a combination of physical and psychological symptoms that include:

Physical:

• Racing heart
• Sweating
• Quick breathing or feeling out of breath, chest tightness
• Shaking, trembling, feeling disoriented or uncoordinated
• Dizziness
• Fatigue
• Digestive issues

Psychological:

• Worried or racing thoughts
• Restlessness or nervous
• Difficulty sleeping or falling/staying asleep
• Fearful
• Irritable, overwhelmed, reassurance seeking
• Sense of doom, danger, or that something bad will happen
• Avoiding places, people, or things that make anxiety worse

Additionally, anxiety can interfere with daily activities, such as work, relationships, school, self-care, and can lead to increased difficulty with daily tasks.

How does Therapy help?

Therapy helps by building strategies and tools that change how a person responds to their thoughts and feelings. This is done by practicing skills that increase acceptance of difficult anxious thoughts and feelings, identifying and aligning with personal values and the behaviours that support those values in life. It includes exploring anxiety with increased mindfulness, self-compassion and acceptance skills to change how anxiety shows up in a person’s life.