Are Your Anxiety Defense Mechanisms Doing More Harm Than Good?

Anxiety can take many forms in a person’s life and at times it can feel like an effective way to cope with life’s stressors. Often anxiety can be a necessary response to processing stressful environments, challenging situations, or areas of great uncertainty. There may even have been times in your life that your anxiety helped you be prepared both mentally and physically to face a challenge. Previously your anxiety might have kept your organized, motivated you to complete tasks, or prepared you for unpredictable future events in your life, family, and career. Over time your body might have become trained to respond to unpredictable situations with anxious feelings in order to signal that you are ready to face challenges head on.

Over time your anxiety developed into an adaptive response. A response that was protective, learned, and useful during major shifts, scary life moments, and times where you might have felt out of control. Progressively your body learned to respond to moments of fear, uncertainty, and adversity with anxiety in order to protect itself from the perceived threat. Your anxiety might have even been effective in protecting you, making you feel at ease, or allowing you to move past challenging times. The hardest part of anxiety being your go to defense mechanism is that it can be hard to recognize when it is not longer benefitting you, and maybe has begun to hinder your growth. So how do you know when your anxiety has crossed the line from being productive to harmful?

When Worrying Becomes Excessive

There may be times when you cannot get an anxious thought, worry, or concern out of your mind. No matter how much you try to push it to the side your concern keeps entering your mind, preventing you from focusing on any other task. There may be times when your anxious thoughts do not allow you to take an active role in your life because they have taken over. No matter how logical you try to be the worries you have do not seem to go away. These worries have the ability to impact your sleep, eating, relationships and even increase susceptibility to panic attacks.

Avoiding Things That Increase Anxiety

Whether it is social situations, work concerns, family issues, or health concerns your anxiety might cause you to withdraw and avoid areas of your life that increase your anxiety symptoms. Avoidance of these situations is a normal emotional and physical response to the perceived threat, but it is not always a productive solution to your anxiety. Often removing or distancing yourself from these areas of your life can increase loneliness, isolation, and belief in your ability to be effective in these areas of your life. When you remove yourself from those triggering situations, anxiety can gain a stronger foothold in your life. Withdrawing from areas of your life can increase your risk of additional mental health concerns and symptoms including depression and suicidal ideation.

When Anxiety Impacts Physical Health

Anxiety can have a strong impact on your body. It can impact your sleep, eating, blood pressure, mood, and energy level. Anxiety as a response to ongoing stress, worry, and fear can exhaust your body and weaken your immune system. By responding to constant stress and never returning to a baseline level your anxiety can exhaust the capabilities of your immune system, leaving it vulnerable. Your anxiety can create a damaging cycle that impacts your physical health which then can increase your anxiety symptoms even more.

The signs your anxiety is doing more harm than good can go beyond the concerns listed above. You could feel that your anxiety is no longer an effective strategy for you to deal with life’s stressors, challenges, or worries. Often our increased anxiety is a learned response to stress experienced in childhood, or later life traumas. The anxiety you feel held a productive and useful role in your life for a long time, while you recovered and moved away from those fears you experienced. Yet, your anxiety no longer makes you feel a sense of preparedness, productivity, or safety. Now your anxiety might feel inadequate, misplaced, or even a burden.

Counseling for anxiety can be an essential resource when you are trying to understand and adapt to life’s challenges. Together we can understand your anxiety, manage its symptoms, and employ more tools that can be effective resources for you. You can heal from your anxiety. It not longer needs to play such a large role in your life or be your first resource during difficult times. Call or email today for a free 15 minute consultation to see how anxiety counseling can be a resource for you.

Anxiety and Relationships: How Your Anxiety Can Impact How You Interact With Others

Have you noticed that your anxiety has been heightened recently? Does your anxiety show up in areas of your life where it has never been before? Do you suddenly become nervous when speaking in front of others, interacting with new groups of people, or when you are interacting with friends, partners, or colleagues?

Heightened anxiety and increased stress are common emotions in today’s world as we face a global pandemic that has shifted how we work, socialize, and manage our home lives.  Anxiety can impact your life in different ways and appear in a variety of settings. Anxiety also can shift where it traditionally presents in your life. For example, in the past your anxiety might have appeared only when speaking in public or when you are meeting new people, but now your anxiety appears when you are trying to sleep and your mind has difficulty calming down. Anxiety can be a moving target that shifts and reappears as the stressors in your life eb and flow.

Your body encounters stressful and threatening stimuli every day. When you are combating stress in other areas of your life (work, relationships, health, finances, conflicts) it can affect how and where your anxiety presents. Many times, individuals will notice the physical symptoms of anxiety that they experience due to the way in which it disrupts their daily lives. Anxiety can impact you physically, emotionally, and socially effecting how you interact socially or relationally with those around you.  

What are some common symptoms of anxiety around others?

-Sweating, jittery, rapid heart rate, or mind “blanking”

-Feeling self-conscious around others, embarrassed or awkward

-Fear of being judged by others

-Fear of talking in front of groups of unknown people, or “performing” in front of others

(Anxiety and Depression Association of America, 2020)

Anxiety might be something you have battled or adjusted to throughout your life. It may have even served a protective purpose in past relationships or settings, allowing your mind and body to constantly be in “fight or flight mode.” Yet, now your anxiety has taken a different path that is not the most useful or sustainable. Anxiety can affect you physically by not letting your mind or body rest and preventing you to from engaging and relying on relationships that could be supportive in managing the symptoms of your anxiety. Your anxiety may have turned a corner and begun to negatively impact your relationships with your family, friends, co-workers, or new social settings.

You are not alone in your experience or understanding of your anxiety. You deserve to speak with someone that understands what you are going through and who can help you sort through both the physical and emotional symptoms of your anxiety. Together we can create a deeper understanding of your anxiety and create a plan to cope, adjust, and manage both the personal and social impacts of your anxiety. While anxiety is commonly experienced, it does not need to dictate your life, decisions, and relationships. Call today for a free 15 minute consultation to discuss how we can manage your anxiety symptoms together.

National Suicide Prevention and Awareness Month

September is national suicide prevention and awareness month, and in line with this, we wanted to share a bit about how we help keep you and your family safe while being seen at our practice. Suicide treatment is a major area of research and clinical focus for our providers. For every client, we work diligently to ensure that we are monitoring and continually assessing for safety to best support your progress. For every client, you can be assured that we will take the following steps:

1. A thorough suicide risk assessment is performed during every first session. For adult clients, this means that assessing for and taking steps to enhance safety is often a main focus of your initial work with your clinician. For children, it means we ask about and assess for safety in many different developmentally appropriate ways. This includes both verbal conversations and questions, as well as through observing signs in your child’s behavior. All of our clinicians have extensive experience in conducting suicide risk assessments, and you can trust that we will be both thorough and direct.

2. Follow-ups are always a part of treatment. Risk for suicide is not stagnant and can change in response to stressors. We check in repeatedly to ensure that all clients have what they need to face life’s challenges. We also utilize interventions at the first sign of risk, responding with treatment approaches that are well-researched and effective.

3. We will provide you with resources for where to seek help in the case of an emergency. This may include hospitals, crisis lines, and behavioral urgent care centers. We also provide referrals for those in need of more intensive treatment prior to working with us. We will remain by your side to support you in determining what is the best path for your or your child’s treatment and safety needs.

4. When working with children, we always share crucial safety information with parents as soon as possible. We take all statements regarding suicide, self-harm, and death seriously and always follow-up to ensure safety. We encourage you to always bring to our attention any concerns regarding safety so that we can help support you and work with your child on ways of expressing themselves. You will never be left in the dark regarding your child’s risk for suicide or self-harm, and we will be certain that we have a system set up to help us communicate regularly. We will also work with you on steps you can take to help keep your child safe at home.

Many individuals seek treatment because they are having distressing thoughts. Many others seek out counseling after hearing their child expressing distressing comments regarding suicide, death, or self-harm. It can be overwhelming to worry about the safety of yourself or of a child. We are here to give you the support you need to process these experiences and determine what steps are needed to feel better. For parents, often just having a professional there to consistently check in and assess for suicidal thoughts in your child can help ease your mind. Through thorough risk assessments and identifying strategies to help you child cope and help you monitor signs of distress, we work to also help reduce the occurrence of your child’s distressing thoughts.

A vital step in suicide awareness means taking your concerns seriously and seeking out help. Thoughts of suicide can feel extremely lonely, as can struggling to support a child who is having these thoughts. You do not need to handle this alone; at Snowline Counseling, we encourage you to express all of your thoughts and emotions and we promise to meet you with acceptance and support. Suicide prevention begins with asking for help and is successful when you feel there is someone in your corner who you can rely upon.

Anxiety and Stress in College Students: How To Notice the Role Anxiety Has In Your Life

College is typically viewed as a time of exciting new experiences. Making new friends, living in a new atmosphere, and developing your identities. Yet, despite this optimistic portrayal, many college students find themselves overwhelmed with stress and anxiety. Trying to manage these feelings on your own while being away from your biggest support system and navigating a new environment is one of many sets of challenges you might face in college.

If you have felt this way, you are not alone. In a recent study, 63% of college students reported feeling overwhelmed in the past year and 23% reported being “diagnosed or treated by a mental health professional for anxiety in the past year” (American College Health Association, 2018).

There are many reasons you may be feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or just not yourself. You may even be encountering these feelings for the first time, leaving you confused about what to do. Whether it is the stress of being in a new environment, overwhelmed with work or social responsibilities, being far from your support system, or just that college is not how you imagined, these all can impact your anxiety and overall mental health. Many students and young adults experience stress, anxiety, and depression even though it may not be commonly talked about or acknowledged.

So what are the next steps?

It can be important to recognize some initial physical and emotional signs of anxiety in order to seek help when necessary.

1.       Worry that interferes with daily life.

2.       Feelings of apprehension or dread.

3.       Restlessness or irritability

4.       Anticipating the worst and being extremely alert to signs of danger.

5.       Pounding or racing heart, or shortness of breath.

6.       Excessive sweating.

7.       Headaches, fatigue, insomnia.

8.       Upset stomach.

(NAMI, 2017)

These are just a few of the warning signs that can appear when anxiety enters your life. The biggest highlights of the anxiety signs mentioned above are that anxiety can interfere with your daily functioning or your ability to effectively engage in school, relationships, work, and personal needs like you otherwise would. It can be persistent, uncontrollable, and overwhelming. You may be feeling a mix of physical and emotional symptoms. These symptoms can change and intensify based on your stress level the environment around you. Some of them might have been more manageable at another time in your life, but now they feel like they are taking over.

These experiences can at times feel impossible to manage, but you do not need to do it alone. Together we can work through the stressors, triggers, and symptoms of your anxiety and allow you to take back control. Through talk therapy, you can become more aware of how your stress and anxiety affect you and what steps you can take to manage your emotional and physical symptoms. If you want to develop a plan to manage your stress and anxiety give us a call today and together we can work toward feeling better.