Understanding Anxiety: What It Is, Why It Happens, and How to Cope
Anxiety is your body's natural response to stress or perceived danger. It's that flutter in your chest, the racing thoughts, the sense that something isn't quite right. In small doses, anxiety can be helpful, keeping you alert and motivating you to solve problems. When anxiety becomes persistent, excessive, and challenging to control, it may be an anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders involve intense feelings that are out of proportion to the actual situation and can significantly impact your daily functioning.
Common Signs of Anxiety
Anxiety shows up differently for everyone. Some common symptoms include:
Physical
Racing heart
Clammy hands or excessive sweating
Shortness of breath
Feeling shaky or weak
Digestive issues
Mental
Racing or obsessive thoughts
Difficulty concentrating
Brain fog
Fear and apprehension
Irritability
Behavioral
Avoiding places, people, or situations that have triggered anxiety
Difficulty sleeping
Difficulty maintaining daily schedule
Increased substance use
If these symptoms are interfering with your ability to function, it's worth exploring the underlying causes.
Why Does Anxiety Happen?
There's no single cause of anxiety. For some people, it's connected to past traumatic experiences. For others, it develops gradually as stress builds up. Genetics can play a role, meaning anxiety can run in families. Life transitions, ongoing stress, or certain medical conditions can also trigger or worsen symptoms.
Anxiety isn't a choice; it's a real response that your body and mind are having, and it deserves to be taken seriously.
Different Types of Anxiety
Understanding what type of anxiety you're experiencing can help point you toward effective support:
Generalized anxiety involves persistent worry about multiple aspects of life, often about ordinary, everyday concerns.
Social anxiety creates intense fear in social situations due to concerns about being judged or embarrassed.
Panic disorder involves sudden, intense episodes of fear that peak within minutes and can include physical symptoms like chest pain or shortness of breath, and an overwhelming sense of dread.
Separation anxiety in children involves excessive worry when away from parents or caregivers.
Specific phobias trigger major anxiety when exposed to particular objects or situations.
Each type of anxiety has its own characteristics, but all are treatable with the right support.
The Impact of Unaddressed Anxiety
When anxiety goes unaddressed, it can affect every area of your life. Relationships may suffer as you withdraw or become irritable. Work performance can decline when you can't concentrate or avoid certain tasks. Physical health may deteriorate from chronic stress. Sleep problems often develop, which then makes anxiety worse.
Many people try to manage anxiety on their own through avoidance, which only strengthens the anxiety over time. Others might turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms that provide temporary relief but create additional problems.
How Therapy Can Help
Anxiety is highly treatable. In therapy, we work together to understand what's driving your anxiety and develop practical strategies for managing it. Through approaches like child-centered play therapy for younger clients or attachment-focused EMDR for those dealing with trauma-related anxiety, we address the root causes while building your capacity to cope.
You'll learn tools for calming your nervous system, challenging unhelpful thought patterns, and building confidence in your ability to handle difficult situations. The goal isn't to eliminate anxiety entirely. We will walk this journey together and work with you so that anxiety doesn't control your life. You'll discover that you're capable of more than you think, even when anxiety is present.
If you'd like to learn how counseling for trauma can help you, reach out today. Our therapists work with adults, teens, and children experiencing anxiety, using approaches tailored to each person's unique experiences. Contact our office to schedule an initial consultation and take that first step toward feeling more like yourself again.
