All about anxiety - what is it and how to manage it
We all experience anxious feelings at some point in our lives - these are a natural body response that can help us to stay safe and alert. However, when anxiety becomes overwhelming and persistent, it can significantly impact day-to-day life and our overall wellbeing.
In this blog post, we’ll explore what anxiety is, the relationship between anxiety, stress and burnout, and supportive tools and strategies to help you manage feelings of anxiety.
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is your body’s response to a perceived or actual threat to your safety. It is more than feeling stressed or worried about something. While stress usually passes once the challenging situation is over, anxiety can persist and may not have a specific cause.
Some of the common signs and symptoms of anxiety, include:
Feeling very worried or anxious most of the time
Difficulty calming down
Feeling fatigued
Difficulty concentrating
Challenges with memory
Muscle tension
Difficulty sleeping
Imagining worst-case scenarios
Obsessive thinking and a sense of impending danger
Avoidance of situations that make you feel anxious (such as taking public transport, going to class or meeting new people).
Alongside these, you may experience physical symptoms of anxiety such as:
A racing heart
Rapid breathing
Feeling tense, restless or ‘on edge’
Sweating
Nausea
Headaches
Shaking or tremors
Stomach pain and/or digestive challenges
Sudden changes in temperature.
Different types of anxiety
There are a number of different types of anxiety, and some people may experience a combination of these.
Generalised Anxiety Disorder: persistent and excessive worry about various aspects of life.
Social Anxiety Disorder: anxiety and avoidance of social situations due to fear of judgement or embarrassment.
Panic Disorder: recurrent and unexpected panic attacks, often accompanied by a fear of future attacks.
Agoraphobia: anxiety about being in situations or places from which escape might be difficult or embarrassing
Specific Phobias: intense fear about a particular situation or object (e.g. of small spaces, heights, thunder or spiders).
Research by BeyondBlue has found that anxiety is the most common mental health condition in Australia, affecting 1 in 4 people. If you’re living with anxiety, please remember that you’re not alone, and there is support available.
The relationship between anxiety and stress, overwhelm and burnout
Stress and anxiety hold some similarities and some important differences. While stress is a response to specific and external pressure or demand, anxiety can occur without a specific external ‘trigger’, or persists after a specific situation has resolved. This ongoing nature of anxiety can make it particularly challenging to manage.
The human body is generally able to manage short-term experiences of stress, overwhelm or even anxiety. But what happens when the stress or anxiety is ongoing or long-term?
Research has consistently shown a connection between anxiety and burnout, finding that chronic anxiety may increase the risk of burnout, and that in some cases anxiety is actually a symptom of burnout.
Burnout is not a condition that happens suddenly - it’s often the culmination of ongoing chronic stress and challenges that leave you feeling completely depleted.
When we’re living in a state of stress or overwhelm, it can be harder to think our way through, problem solve or respond how we might when we’re not stressed.
Reasons why you may feel overwhelmed
Overwhelm can arise from a stressful event or experience, mental health challenges, or an accumulation of stressful experiences that overwhelm our capacity to cope. Some common situations that may leave you feeling overwhelmed include:
A stressful work environment or excessive workload
Relationship conflict
Financial stress
Health concerns
Loss of a loved one
Traumatic experience
Global and environmental issues
Times of major change in life.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. Overwhelm is an individual experience, and we can experience overwhelm for a diverse range of reasons.
How overwhelm affects the brain
Dr Dan Siegel’s Hand Model of the Brain, gives us a way to picture our brain and understand what’s happening when we’re in a state of overwhelm.
In Siegel’s model, imagine your hand as your brain. If you place your thumb in the middle of your palm and curl your fingers over the top of it, you can view your knuckles as the face and the back of your hand as the back of your head. Your wrist then represents the spinal cord. If you lift up your fingers and thumb, your palm represents the inner brainstem (responsible for our basic survival functions). Place your thumb back into your palm, and this represents the limbic area of your brain (responsible for emotions, memories and activating our survival responses - fight/flight/freeze/fawn). Reforming your hand into a fist, with your thumb sitting underneath your fingers, your fingers represent the cortex of the brain (the area responsible for thinking and problem-solving).
When we go into a stress response, it’s like we’ve ‘flipped the lid’ (raise your fingers up), and the cortex area is offline to us, while the lower area of the brain takes charge. This is why it can be particularly challenging to “think our way out of” stress and overwhelm, and why tools and strategies that help us to bring our cortex back online first are so helpful.
We don’t have to be in actual life-threatening danger to “flip our lid”. Any perceived or actual stressful situation can lead to this stress response activating.
We all have different temperaments, life experiences and coping tendencies, and what we experience as overwhelming will be unique to each individual.
Importantly, the processes that your brain and body go through under stress are automatic - you don’t choose them and they’re not your fault - they are a natural body response to a potential danger - your body’s way of keeping you safe.
What we do have control over is how we support ourselves and each other to navigate and manage stress, overwhelm and anxiety when they arise.
Managing anxiety
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf.” John Kabat-Zinn
When we prioritise our rest, self-care and nervous system care, we can lower our stress levels and support the mind and body to navigate anxiety. What works best will be unique to you and depend on what else is happening in your life. For example, you may notice that you experience more anxiety:
If you’re having trouble sleeping well
When not practising regular self-care
After caffeinated drinks, such as coffee, tea or energy drinks
During high pressure times at work or school
When meeting new people or going to social events
The fundamentals of wellbeing including sleep, rest, movement, nutrition and connection act as buffers, helping to maintain the energy reserves that support you to cope with experiences of stress and anxiety.
For example:
Anxiety (the presenting issue) has started to appear more regularly and you find you’re spending more time in an anxious state
There are some predisposing factors, including family history of anxiety, busy or overscheduled life, experiences growing up, temperament, etc.
Then what’s called a precipitating factor happens, such as COVID, a separation, or a new role
There may be perpetuating factors that further reduce your coping reserves, such as going to bed later than usual, or not taking breaks.
On the flip side, there are also protective factors that boost your coping reserves, such as eating well, practising sleep hygiene, and spending time in nature.
We may not be able to change the predisposing and precipitating factors, however we have some control over the perpetuating and protective factors and so it can be helpful to focus here.
Here are a few tips for managing anxiety in your day-to-day life, with a focus on boosting your protective factors.
Prioritise sleep
Quality sleep is incredibly important for your overall wellbeing, as well as for managing stress and anxiety levels. To support your sleep, try to establish a consistent bedtime routine, a calming sleep environment and limit caffeine and screens before bed.
Set boundaries
If you find yourself reaching a point of exhaustion and anxiety, marked by feeling resentment with people around them, it is often a sign that boundaries need to be put in place.
This can include physical boundaries and boundaries around your time and energy, in your personal and professional life.
Setting boundaries can help reduce overwhelming demands and create a sense of control and balance.
Refocus energy on the things you can control
It can be deflating, and/or stress invoking, to focus only on circumstances outside of our control, so tuning in to what’s within our Circle of Control offers us the chance to proactively reflect on the things we can influence and change.
Learn more about using the Circles of Control, Influence and Concern to relieve stress and anxiety.
Use brief grounding practices and mindfulness for anxiety and stress relief
Use practices such as mindful breathing and body scan meditations each day to support your body to ground back to the present moment and to help regulate your nervous system.
Here’s a series of short 5-minute stress relief techniques for you to try.
Seek professional support for anxiety
Anxiety can have a serious impact on our wellbeing and lives. If you find that anxiety is standing in the way of your goals, or impacting your wellbeing, please know there is professional support available from trained professionals, including: GP’s, counsellors, psychologists and more.
To work 1:1 with Nicky Angelone, for an individualised approach to understanding and managing anxiety, stress, overwhelm, or burnout, visit www.flourishmindfully.com.au.
Counselling sessions are online via Zoom or in person in Dingley Village, Melbourne, Australia. Nicky is a registered Counsellor & Psychotherapist (with PACFA), and Yoga & Meditation Teacher (with Yoga Australia and the Meditation Association of Australia).