COPING WITH ANXIETY

The symptoms of anxiety can have a significant impact on how a person behaves and goes about their daily life. The essence of anxiety is worrying about some potential threat. It is trying to cope with a future event that you think will be negative.

You do this by paying more attention to possible signs of potential threat, and looking internally to see whether you will be able to cope with that threat. When you notice your anxious symptoms, you think that you can’t cope with the situation, and therefore become more anxious.

How Avoidance Contributes to Anxiety

As your anxiety increases, you try to reduce the anxiety and prevent what you think might happen by avoiding the situation. If you cannot avoid the situation, then you use subtle avoidance to reduce the anxiety. For example, you may use certain rituals, like standing close to a door to make a quick escape. In some way, you might feel less anxious when you engage in avoidance behaviours.

However, when you have to deal with the situation the next time, you are less confident that you can cope with it because you avoided it the last time or become dependent on safety behaviours. So you feel more anxious. As a result, you avoid the situation or engage in subtle avoidance.

Safety Behaviours and Anxiety

If you feel anxious, or anticipate feeling anxious, it makes sense that you will do things to reduce your anxiety. In addition to avoidance and subtle avoidance, many people use “safety behaviours” to help cope with anxiety. These may include -  

• Using distraction to avoid feeling anxious or thinking about anxiety (e.g. always keeping busy or eliminating free-time)

• Always having an exit plan for potentially-anxious situations

• Making sure you have someone else with you.

• Engaging in excessive research prior to taking a trip, starting a new job, buying something, all to ensure nothing will go wrong

These safety behaviours also play a part in maintaining the vicious cycle of anxiety. When you become dependent on them, it can be more distressing if one day they are not available to you.

Reversing the Vicious Cycle of Anxiety

Vicious cycles play an important role in maintaining anxiety. However, like the vicious cycle of depression, you can turn around this cycle to create a positive cycle that will help you overcome anxiety.

One important step in this cycle is gradually confronting feared situations. This will lead to an improved sense of confidence, which will help reduce your anxiety and allow you to go into situations that are important to you.

Use “graded exposure” by starting with situations that are easier for you to handle, then work your way up to more challenging tasks. This allows you to build your confidence slowly, to use other skills you have learned, to get used to the situations, and to challenge your fears about each situational exposure exercise. By doing this in a structured and repeated way, you have a good chance of reducing your anxiety about those situations.

Coping Skills: Breathing & Thinking Better

When you are gradually confronting feared situations, there will be a short term increase in anxiety. This is normal— everyone feels anxious about doing things they fear. The important thing to remember is that you can learn other skills as alternatives to avoidance and safety behaviours. 

Breathing: Anxiety is often associated with fast, shallow breathing, which contributes to the physical sensation of anxiety. By slowing down your breathing and using calming and relaxation techniques, you can reduce your anxiety.

Thinking: There are many types of negative thoughts which are associated with anxiety, such as “I will not be able to cope” or “I must avoid this situation.” Learning to challenge these thoughts with more balanced ones can help to reduce the experience of anxiety.

Four Steps to Reversing the Vicious Cycle of Anxiety

 1. Confront feared situations without aid of safety behaviours

 

2. Short term - slight increase in anxiety,

then a decrease in physical symptoms

and attention scanning

3. Use of coping skills, anxiety reduces

to manageable level

4. Greater belief in ability to

 control own responses

 

LEARN ABOUT SOCIAL ANXIETY

Social Anxiety

Sometimes known as social phobia, social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a surprisingly common form of anxiety disorder that causes an individual to experience intense anxiety in some or all of their social interactions in everyday life.  Given this, social anxiety can be defined as the persistent fear of one or more social or performance situations in which one is exposed to unfamiliar people or to possible scrutiny by others, and where exposure to such situations provokes intense anxiety.

It should be noted that some level of anxiety in social situations at times is very normal.

The Individual

Individuals who suffer from social anxiety typically have a stronger than usual desire to make a good social impression. We all like to think we are making a favourable social impression! Unfortunately, they also fear that they are not as good socially as other people and will fail to come up to an acceptable standard of social behaviour – that they will not make the favourable impression they so crave.

In this sense, social anxiety can be understood as an intense fear of embarrassment. Individuals with social anxiety experience a wide range of unpleasant symptoms of anxiety from muscle tension, increased heart rate and dizziness to nausea, dry mouth, and breathlessness. However, of particular concern to them in social situations are the clearly visible signs of anxiety such as blushing, perspiring, shaking and stammering. 

The Social Situation

Individuals with social anxiety tend to either avoid or endure with severe anxiety or distress these much-feared situations. Because the anxiety is so intense and distressing, it’s much easier just to stay away from social situations and avoid other people altogether. Individuals can isolate themselves to such an extent that they give up work and remain at home.

In some circumstances their social contact can narrow down to their immediate family or in extreme circumstances to no one at all. This then can lead to feelings of sadness and even depression. Others can turn to alcohol in an attempt to ease their social discomfort and this can lead to serious problems with alcohol misuse and dependency.

Unfortunately, the avoidance, anxious anticipation, or distress experienced in social situations interferes greatly with the individual’s normal routine at work, in school, during social activities, and/or in relationships.

Most individuals with social anxiety have jobs that are well beneath their capabilities and capacities because of their social concerns: the nightmare of job interviews, the agony of working in a job where there is a lot of public contact or the dread of being promoted to a position of authority over other or that involves team meetings or formal presentations.

It is important to note that individuals who suffer from social anxiety do recognise that their fear is unreasonable and/or excessive, but try as they do they cannot simply stop themselves having these irrational or excessive concerns. Finally, without proper treatment social anxiety tends to develop into a longstanding and unremitting condition.

Symptoms

Behavioral & Emotional Symptoms:

• Anxiety reaches such a point that daily tasks, school, work and activities become affected
• Avoiding situations where the sufferer feels he/she may be the center of attention
• Kids with possible SA tend to be worried about being embarrassed in front of peers
• Considerable fear of being in situations with strangers (people the sufferer does not know)
• Dread over how they will be presented to others
• Excessive fear of being teased or criticized
• Excessive fear that other people may notice that the sufferer looks anxious
• Excessive worry about being anxious, which makes the anxiety worse
• Excessive worry about embarrassment and humiliation
• Fear of meeting people in authority
• Having severe anxiety or panic attacks when in the feared situation
• Refraining from doing certain things or talking to people because of a fear of embarrassment
• The individual worries excessively about being in situations where he/she may be judged
• When in a situation that causes anxiety the sufferer’s mind may go blank

Physical Signs and Symptoms:

• A feeling that the heart is either pounding too hard or fluttering (palpitations)
• Abdominal pain and/or stomach upset
• Avoiding eye contact
• Blushing
• Children with SA may weep, have tantrums, cling to parents, or shut themselves out
• Clammy hands
• Cold hands
• Confusion
• Crying
• Diarrhea
• Difficulty talking; this may include a shaky voice
• Dry mouth
• Dry throat
• Excessive sweating
• Muscle tension
• Nausea
• Shaking
• Trembling

TREATMENT

Mindfulness & Relaxation Training: Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy 

Mindfulness and relaxation training can be very helpful in minimising the disabling effect of bodily symptoms during periods of anxiety. A number of useful strategies will be taught in order to approach problematic thoughts associated with your condition. Another area of intervention is helping you to become more aware of the vicious circle of avoidance. You will be trained in a variety of strategies to equip you to face anxiety provoking situations in small, manageable steps. Throughout all these endeavours you will be supported and psychotherapy will be conducted at a pace comfortable for you