Anxiety
It’s our body’s way of preparing us for challenge when faced with a stressful situation that may trigger our, ‘fight or flight’ response.
This trigger will flood our body with chemicals that allow us to become alert and ready to react to any challenge.
This response can be useful and helpful when we face new or stressful situations.
But anxiety often feels like it manifests at the wrong time. This can feel frightening, even alienating, affecting the behaviour and thoughts in negative ways.
These can include…
- Feeling scared, panicky, embarrassed or ashamed.
- Not having the confidence to try new things, face challenges or even carry on as normal.
- Finding it hard to concentrate, or having problems with sleeping or eating.
- Having angry outbursts, getting angry very quickly and feeling ‘out of control’.
- Worries or negative thoughts, or thinking that bad things are going to happen all the time.
Alternative strategies that help us cope with these natural, normal feelings can be beneficial.
The idea that we have the power to choose how we think and feel about very normal feelings, and how to cope when we feel overwhelmed with worries can help enormously.
This mind-set change can have beneficial and long lasting effects that can help with issues surrounding work or exams, bullying, friendship problems, money or housing, involvement in crime, gangs or drug culture, as well as more common day to day worries about appearance, relationship problems and family disputes.
Talking can help, allowing opportunity to discuss and explore mind-set in a positive and uplifting way.
