What is it?
Anxiety is the feeling of worry, tension, or fear about things that might happen or are about to happen, affecting both thoughts and how we feel.
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Description
Anxiety is a normal, human feeling and your body’s natural response to stress or danger. It can be experienced through our thoughts, feelings and physical sensations.
Most people feel anxious from time to time. It’s common to experience some anxiety while coping with stressful events or changes.
Anxiety becomes a problem when it stops you from doing the things you want or need to do in life.
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The most common mental health problems among young people are emotional disorders, including anxiety and depression
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Symptoms
Anxiety looks different for everyone. You might feel anxiety in:
- Your body
- dizziness
- tiredness
- a noticeably strong, fast or irregular heartbeat (palpitations)
- muscle aches and tension
- trembling or shaking
- dry mouth
- excessive sweating
- shortness of breath
- stomach ache
- feeling sick
- headache
- pins and needles
- difficulty falling or staying asleep (insomnia)
- Your feelings
- nervous, on edge and unable to relax
- overwhelmed
- having a sense of fear, like something bad is going to happen
- out of control
- tired, grumpy or irritable
- needing reassurance or worrying you’ve upset someone
- self-conscious
- Your behaviour
- finding it difficult to concentrate
- eating more or less than usual
- needing the toilet more
- fidgeting or feeling tense
- sleep problems
- having panic attacks
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What causes anxiety?
Causes
Lots of different situations and life experiences can cause anxiety. Anxiety is very personal to each person and everyone experiences it differently.
Sometimes there are no obvious triggers for it, and it’s difficult to know what causes anxiety, which can be upsetting or stressful in itself.
Everyone’s anxiety levels are different. Some people find more situations stressful and experience more challenges in life than others, and they feel more anxious as a result.
Possible causes of anxiety include:
○ our upbringing
○ our environment
○ things that happen to us
○ our temperament
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When is anxiety a mental health problem?
Anxiety can become a mental health problem if it impacts your ability to live your life as fully as you want to.
For example, it may be a problem if:
- your feelings of anxiety are very strong or last for a long time
- your fears or worries are out of proportion to the situation
- you avoid situations that might cause you to feel anxious
- your worries feel very distressing or are hard to control
- you regularly experience symptoms of anxiety, which could include panic attacks, sleep problems or nausea
- you find it hard to go about your everyday life or do things you enjoy
Anxiety disorders
- Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD)
GAD is a long-term condition that causes you to feel anxious about a wide range of situations and issues, rather than one specific event.
People with GAD feel anxious most days and often struggle to remember the last time they felt relaxed.
As soon as 1 anxious thought is resolved, another may appear about a different issue.
- Social anxiety disorder
Social anxiety is more than shyness. It’s a fear that does not go away and affects everyday activities, self confidence, relationships and work or school life.
Many people occasionally worry about social situations, but someone with social anxiety feels overly worried before, during and after them.
- Health anxiety
Health anxiety is where you spend a lot of time worrying about feeling ill or getting ill. You might keep checking your body for signs of illness and spend a lot of time researching symptoms. Or you might feel like you need a lot of reassurance that you’re not unwell, even if your GP tells you that you’re healthy. This fear can affect your life in many ways and mean you avoid certain situations.
- Panic disorders
Panic disorder is where you have recurring and regular panic attacks, often for no apparent reason. These are usually sudden and out of the blue, without a clear cause, and can be difficult to manage. You might also be constantly worried about if and when a panic attack will happen.
- Phobias
A phobia is an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal.
Phobias are more pronounced than fears. They develop when a person has an exaggerated or unrealistic sense of danger about a situation or object.
If a phobia becomes very severe, a person may organise their life around avoiding the thing that’s causing them anxiety. As well as restricting their day-to-day life, it can also cause a lot of distress.
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Voice
Fears and worries are a normal part of child development and the content of fears change according to the individual’s developmental stage. Anxiety disorders occur when the intensity of the fear or worry is so high that it starts to impact on the child’s functioning and well-being and/or when the anxiety is out of context with their developmental stage.
- Dr Tessa Crombie and Dr Jessica Richardson, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
Getting help
If you’re struggling to manage your anxiety, help is available. The best place to start is by making an appointment to see your GP.
Below are some of the treatment options available. The treatment you are offered might depend on your age, where you live and what’s causing your anxiety.
- Talking therapies
Talking therapy can help you get to the root of what is causing your anxiety. One of the most common types of talking therapy used to treat anxiety is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). CBT focuses on how your thoughts, beliefs and attitudes affect your feelings and behaviour, and teaches you coping skills for dealing with different problems.
Applied relaxation therapy can help you manage the physical symptoms of anxiety. This approach involves learning how to relax your muscles in situations where you normally experience anxiety.
- Medication
Your doctor might offer to prescribe you medication to help manage your symptoms. Some people find it helpful to try talking therapies and medication at the same time.
Some medications you might be offered are:
- Beta blockers like propranolol for anxiety that helps with physical symptoms.
- Antidepressants, usually selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like sertraline, escitalopram and paroxetine.
- Benzodiazepines like diazepam.
- Self-management resources
Self-management tools might be the first thing your GP offers you because it’s available quite quickly, and there’s a chance it could help you to feel better without needing to try other options. This might include workbooks and online cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) options.
You can find a wealth of free resources on the NCL Waiting Room platform that could help ease symptoms of anxiety. This includes websites, videos, Apps and more. You can find some of these below.
Some resources that may help
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