Anxiety

Questions to ask yourself when considering seeking help for anxiety:

 

Is there an issue or issues that I fear facing?

What keeps me from facing my fears?

Are my fears realistic or am I blowing things out of proportion?

Have the things I am afraid of ever happened in the past?

Do I stop myself from getting the help that I need?

 

Anxiety can manifest in many forms, from butterflies in the stomach, to ruminations in the mind, to panic, to paranoia. Although anxiety can have a negative correlation, we can actually understand anxiety as a defense mechanism that has its original function in survival. 

 

Anxiety is simply a warning that something in one's life has gone - or is about to go - amiss. It is a signal that a problem has gone unattended, often suppressed from conscious awareness or just denied.

 

While anxiety is unpleasant, and severe anxiety most unpleasant, anxiety always represents a great opportunity to examine those elements of one's psychological life that have been left un-addressed. 

 

Anxiety is thus a call to pay attention, to become aware, to become conscious of problems one needs to deal with constructively.

 

Anxiety warns us against real or perceived danger and so the purpose of anxiety is to prepare us to fight against or escape from a perceived threat. A typical reactionary problem of anxiety is that we frequently overreact to a perceived threat and then our anxiety becomes overwhelming.