Therapy for anxiety.

Feeling uptight, irritable, and finding your mind going around and around with the same worries?

Feeling on edge, being easily set off, and worry that is difficult to control are all anxiety symptoms. Other anxiety symptoms include:

• Sleep difficulties, such as difficulty falling asleep or difficulty staying asleep. You may be finding it difficult to go back to sleep if you’ve awaken even though you feel tired.

• Feeling tired throughout the day. Your sleep difficulties may be causing you to feel tired, but your nervous system being in a state of near fight or flight may also be using a lot of your energy.

• Ruminating thoughts. You find yourself going over the same interactions with others over and over again. You find it difficult to pull your mind away to other thoughts or tasks. This may also keep you up at night.

• Intrusive thoughts. You find fears popping into your mind leaving you feeling panicked and unsettled.You realize on some level that these thoughts are irrational, but don’t know how to address them.

• Brain fog, difficulty focusing. Your mind is all over the place or you find it difficult to think clearly.

• Panic Attack Symptoms. People sometimes have an intense onset of symptoms that can sometimes have an identifiable catalyst and sometimes it’s unclear what caused the panic attack. These symptoms can include heart racing, shortness of breath, tunnel vision, feeling impending doom, sweating, trembling, breathing rapidly, numbness or tingling in the extremities. Panic attacks can be so painful and alarming that sometimes people think they are having a life threatening medical issue and go to the ER.

Sometimes people are more aware of the symptoms while other times people are more aware of the behavioral changes they find themselves making because of anxiety. Here are some examples of behavior changes or patterns in behavior that are evidence of underlying anxiety:

• Avoiding activities due to feeling uncomfortable thinking about or participating in them. This may be related to feeling like you can’t successfully navigate the situation.

• Avoiding people-you stop making plans to do things with people. When you do find yourself around people, you find yourself being really critical of yourself, expecting others to reject you, or feeling like you’re performing to live up to some kind of persona that will be accepted by others. This social isolation can leave you feeling lonely, sad, and disconnected.

• People pleasing-You fear angering or disappointing someone else, and therefore you say yes to something you really don’t want to do. Or you may want to do it, but because you’ve said yes to every ask in your life, you run out of time and energy to do those things. You may put your own plans on hold, things that may bring joy and fulfillment to your life, because you don’t want to let others’ down.

• Hiding parts of yourself from others. The fear of rejection of some aspect of yourself can cause you to present a certain face to other people. You may find it difficult to find others with whom you can relate more.

• Trying to control the outcome of as many things as you can. You may spend lots of time thinking ahead of time about how you’ll approach a situation, all the details, the things you need to do. When things don’t go as planned, you find yourself set off and panicking.