What is Anxiety Disorder?

Anxiety is a normal human function and it’s there to help us perform better or to help protect us in times of fear or panic, if we are in danger.

Believe it or not Anxiety can be a really helpful and useful tool when it’s performing correctly because it initiates our fight, flight or freeze response.

In terms of what it feels like to have anxiety; it can be this constant feeling of dread, a panicky feeling and the need to feel like you have to control everything in order to manage that feeling, amongst other things.

I will do another blog about the symptoms another time.

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Healthy Anxiety

Our fight, flight or freeze response is a natural part of our bodies.

For example, if you came across a bear, the body would produce a level of anxiety to trigger hormones such as adrenaline, to help you make a fast and quick decision about what to do in order to save your life:

a) Do you fight the bear?

b) Do you run away from the bear?

c) Do you freeze in the hope that the bear will just walk off?

It can be there for when you are going to perform on stage: you might notice you feel really anxious beforehand but then when you get on stage you perform amazingly and that’s because that healthy level of anxiety has made you perform better.

The Difference Between Anxiety and Anxiety Disorder

Anxiety Disorder is essentially where this ‘normal’ function becomes programmed to keep us on high alert, all of the time. The problem with an Anxiety Disorder is that it sets this natural response on high alert and makes it so that it is there for every aspect of our lives, even when it doesn’t need to be. We are looking for dangers, even when we don’t need to be.

Our brain gets caught in the cycle of looking for dangers and looking for things to be worried about and we start catastrophising and looking ahead all the time rather than being in the present moment.

You then start to fear that fearful feeling, this in itself becomes a vicious circle and that’s when it becomes a problem.

I have to remind myself all the time that being afraid of things going wrong isn't the way to make things go right.

- Unknown

Our bodies then respond to this by being tense and pushing the fight, flight or freeze hormones around our bodies to get make us feel unwell or uneasy.

The problem with Anxiety Disorder is that the brain is living so far in the future that it’s already catastrophising about what could happen, even when you don’t realise and aren’t paying attention to those thoughts, they’re having an effect on your body and feelings and this starts the chain reaction.

Managing Anxiety Disorder

The good news is that it can be managed and controlled.

I can show you mechanisms and techniques that help bring Anxiety back under control and bring that natural fight, flight or freeze response back into order, so that it’s only there when you actually need it.

Click on the button below to see the details of my coaching services ..

Sarah

Coaching Services