Anxiety & Stress
Stress and anxiety are normal life experiences. It happens to everyone. It is a survival mechanism as it prepares us to cope with danger and stress. It isn’t really correct to say that any specific event or situation will make someone stressed. That is because people are all different in how they look at situations. For example, one person may be afraid of water and so not go swimming whereas another person may see it as an opportunity to have some fun. The experience of anxiety depends on how the individual looks at a particular situation rather than the situation itself.
Anxiety can affect a person physically as well as how he/she thinks and behaves. For example, physical effects can include trembling, muscle tension and feeling sick. When anxious a person can feel apprehensive, worried or on edge. This can lead the person to avoid some situations or even to run away.
Anxiety can become a problem when there is no real danger and it continues long after the stress is over. In response to prolonged stress, the body and brain chemistry change in a way that can result in numerous negative physical and mental responses. Research has shown that chronic stress can increase the risk of developing depression and other mental and physical health problems. For a person who has experienced psychosis, the experience of too much stress increases the possibility of a relapse. Increased stress can also make existing symptoms worse.
Dealing with Anxiety
There are a number of practical ways to deal with anxiety. These include:
Learning to relax
You can learn how to control the physical bodily sensations of anxiety by using relaxation exercises and slow regular breathing.
Learning to control distressing thoughts
In the short term, you can do this by finding ways of distracting your mind from the thoughts. In the long term, it is a much more useful to find ways of challenging the anxious thoughts because they are usually not based on fact.
Learning to face fear
You can re-learn how to cope with a situation without feeling anxious by gradually exposing yourself to the feared situation This can help you to control the anxiety and restore your confidence.
In mild to moderate cases these self help approaches can break the unhelpful cycle of thinking and help gain control over anxiety. However, when they don’t work stress and anxiety can, over time, develop into particular mental disorders such as phobias, Panic Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. In these cases it is important to get help from a qualified mental health professional.
Stress and Anxiety (PDF, 110KB)
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