Anxiety Go Away!

Seeming to co-exist, conditions of anxiety & stress often manifest itself in varying ways and degrees for different individuals. It affects all of us at some point of our lives and is seen to grow more as we advance towards a busier life. Certain common physical and emotional symptoms of stress & anxiety include:

• Feeling irritable and restless

• Apprehending danger
• Having trouble concentrating
• Frequent headaches and insomnia
• Stomach cramps
• Palpitations
• Troubled breathing
• Inexplicable shaking
• Fatigue and tiredness

Having said this, we may then establish a link between these two conditions. Feeling stressed is simply a condition wherein some situation or thought makes you feel frustrated or angry. Anxiety is a sensation of apprehending the worst, often due to unexplained reasons. However, symptoms of anxiety and stress are said to originate from the same biological factor, which probes us to either face or flee from a particular situation. In fact, how you deal with anxiety depends to a large extent on how you tackle a particular stress situation.

Forms Of Anxiety-Stress

While symptoms of these two seemingly common disorders are quite identical, their degrees can vary for different individuals. For most, it starts with lack of appetite and insomnia; it soon amounts to visible physical symptoms, including heavy breathing, thumping of the heart and feelings of nausea and dizziness.

Some forms of anxiety stress include:
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) : Sufferers exhibiting this disorder are constant worrywarts about nothing in particular. People with this problem are seen to constantly worry even about their daily activities.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) : One of the most severe forms, sufferers tend perform one task multiple times, or exhibit a behavior form that is difficult to contain. Signs of OCD include continuously washing an object or oneself or checking to see if the lock on the door is intact.

Panic Disorder: This can be said to be a part of what is called an anxiety circle, in which, the individual begins to feel panic, together with a heightened sense of fear of feeling another round of panic coming on.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) : One of the more serious manifestations, this trigger for this disorder is thoughts of some traumatic experience that one might have undergone. Sufferers with this disorder often withdraw into themselves and undergo severe depression.

Social Phobia: This phobia is triggered by thought of being mocked at or made fun of in public. These forms of anxiety leads to a high level of stress, thus making one avoid public outings and gatherings.

How Do I Overcome These Conditions?

Since these conditions are not really an illness, a lot depends on how you begin adapting yourself to the situation. You can follow some basic guidelines to help you cope:

• Start by telling yourself that a particular situation isn’t as serious as it looks. Explaining the situation in a different light to yourself would change the way the chemical inside your body reacts, thus controlling the face or flee reactions.

• If you have occasional spasms of headache, stomach cramps, digestion problems and insomnia, they could be stemming from high levels of stress and anxiety in your life. Try and identify the source and either take self-action or consult a medical professional for treatment.
• Learn to relax more. Take out time for yourself, watch a light movie, hear some soothing music and have fun with friends.

Symptoms of anxiety and stress are easily noticed today owing to the kind of life that we lead and the busy schedules that we follow. While these aren’t completely uncommon, it is important to learn how to deal with these conditions in the initial stage itself. Taking the right measures at the right time is very important to lead a stress-free life.