Understanding Anxiety

1 UUnnddeerrssttaannddiinnggAAnnxxiieettyy An Anxiety UK self help guide ContentsForeword .. 4 What is Anxiety ? .. 6 How did I develop Anxiety ? .. 8 Life strainsSpecific stressful eventsSocial conditioningUnderstanding Anxiety .. 12 Physical symptomsPsychological symptomsBehavioural symptomsPersonal experiences of 24 Living with agoraphobia and a fear of being aloneLiving with social phobiaLiving with claustrophobia and panic attacksLiving with health anxietyLiving with emetophobiaManagement and treatment of 35 National Institute for Health & Clinical Excellence (NICE)Relaxation trainingHyperventilation and faulty breathingDeep breathingRelaxation exerciseDistraction techniquesThought stoppingSelf-talkWorry postponement2 Talking therapies .. 43 Cognitive behavioural therapyCounsellingEye Movement Densensitisation & Reprocessing(EMDR)HypnotherapyNeuro-ling uistic programmingWhat else can help?

2 48 DietHerbal, homeopathic and natural remediesComplementary therapiesPhysical exercisePeer support (self help groups, mentoring, pen-pal schemes)MedicationFinal words .. 54 Useful hope you will find the following information bookuseful. Written by myself, in the capacity of ChiefExecutive of Anxiety UK, the guide has beendeveloped alongside input from a wide range ofAnxiety UK members, volunteers and clinical advisors. This guide aims to provide you with a greaterunderstanding of Anxiety . Anxiety is the commonthread which links all Anxiety disorders fromagoraphobia to obsessive compulsive disorder. Thekey to learning to live with any Anxiety -relatedcondition is to develop ways of coping andacceptance, hard though this may be at times. This,however, can only be achieved with an understandingof what Anxiety is and how it affects you as anindividual. I cannot overemphasise this last point aswe are all individuals and are so very different in ourpersonalities, genetic and biological , although there will be similarities in theway Anxiety affects us, there will also be distinctdifferences.

3 Because of this, there is no set path torecovery. There are, however, various therapies andtechniques that are useful as starting points, whichothers have found helpful in the past and which aredescribed in this do not pretend this guide will be the answer toall your problems because for Anxiety there is no miracle cure . What we can say is that since AnxietyUK s formation back in 1970, we have never lost amember to Anxiety alone! So, whilst most of us have5felt at one time in the heat of an Anxiety attack thatwe were going to die (or go mad for that matter),you can rest assured that this will not , in the same vein, just as it has taken sometime for your Anxiety condition to manifest itself, itwill also take some time to treat and you and othersmust therefore be people find that the path to recovery involves alot of soul searching and the removal of excessbaggage, so to speak.

4 You may find that in order toget better, you have to completely change yourlifestyle and even lose a few acquaintances along theway. However, what I can say for certain is that youwill emerge a much better person and will haveprogressed considerably in terms of your ownpersonal hope the following pages help to unravel themystery of Anxiety and expose it for what it really is just another wishesNicky LidbetterChief ExecutiveAnxiety UKWhat is Anxiety ? Anxiety is the feeling you have when you think thatsomething unpleasant is going to happen in thefuture. Other words such as feeling apprehensive , uncertain , nervous and on edge also provide agood description of feelings linked to is completely normal and something that allhuman beings experience from time to time, whenfaced with situations that are difficult or word Anxiety is often used to cover a broadrange of experiences and is linked with emotionssuch as fear and worry.

5 In fact, fear and Anxiety arealmost interchangeable itself can be a helpful emotion, as it can helpyou to prepare for events ahead as well as improvingyour performance. However, Anxiety can become sosevere and intense at times that it becomesdebilitating and starts to restrict daily routine and lifeas a whole. In essence, at this point, the anxietyexperienced has got out of proportion and you endup feeling much more anxious than you wouldexpect someone else to be in your circumstances. At this point, you can be said to be suffering from an Anxiety disorder. There are many different anxietydisorders (phobias, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder -OCD - panic attacks, etc) that all have anxietysymptoms at their causes Anxiety ?Some people seem to be born with a tendency to beanxious and indeed recent research suggests that arisk for certain forms of Anxiety disorders can beinherited.

6 Other people develop Anxiety disorders after havingexperienced specific traumatic, stressful incidents orevents in their life for example, divorce,bereavement, starting a new job, moving house, disorders can also be learnt - for example,you can become anxious after seeing someone elseacting in an anxious way. Usually this happens whenchildren see their parent/significant adult in their lifebeing scared of something - for example, time, the child also develops a fear of spidersand learns this anxious behaviour. However, formany people there is no obvious trigger for theiranxiety and it is just something that they next section of this guide goes into further detailabout the causes of did I developanxiety?Life Strains the stresses of life Often people find it very hard to understand justwhere their Anxiety came from because there is notalways an obvious trigger.

7 However, in ourexperience, we have found that the majority ofpeople develop Anxiety after having been under stress for a period of time, and that there is notnecessarily a specific trigger. You may have sufferedlots of minor stresses, which in themselves seemsmall. However, accumulated together they amountto quite significant stress. Think back over the pastyears - what have you been through? I know formyself, the trigger for my experience with anxietybegan with being burgled; three months later my carwas stolen. I then began work in an isolatedenvironment away from family and friends. I thought Ihad dealt with these setbacks successfully at the timeof their occurrence. However, it was six months laterthat I began to experience panic attacks almost adelayed reaction to stress. You do not even have tohave suffered stressful, distinct events to experienceanxiety.

8 It may be, for example, that you have had anunpleasant boss at work to cope with over manyyears and the stress and stain of this relationship hasgradually worn you down. This type of stress is called life strain . Another example may be living constantlyon the breadline: deprivation is a well-known factorin a person s predisposition to there is confusion over the source ofanxiety. For example, we have known manysuccessful businessmen (accustomed to flyingregularly) to suddenly experience an Anxiety attackduring a flight. They then develop what they believeis a fear of flying. What is important is to distinguisha true fear of flying from an Anxiety attack which justhappened to take place whilst on a plane. In thesecases, more often than not, the person concernedwill have been considerably stressed for a period oftime. This stress/ Anxiety unfortunately came to ahead whilst that person was flying and two and twowere put together to make five.

9 This scenario can be extended to encompass otherspecific fears; I know myself when I first startedhaving panic attacks, one of the first places I had onewas whilst stuck in a huge traffic jam. From thereonwards, I made a conscious effort to avoid any roadwhere I thought there was a potential for a jam. Yousee, what I did was make the mistake of associatingthe places where I had Anxiety attacks as being thecauses of the attacks. I now know that the places andsituations were largely irrelevant and it was how I feltinside that fed the fear. I had become frightened ofthe Anxiety attacks and had started to live in fear offear a phrase you may have seen in many a self-help book!9 Specific stressful eventsIf you feel you have not been particularly stressedout over the past year or so, it may be that anxietystarted after a specific incident, known as a trigger.

10 This is also a very common reason for developinganxiety. We have found that people are more likelyto suffer Anxiety disorders after experiencing any ofthe following: bereavement, divorce, moving house,surgery, illness and violence. There are other triggersof course but these are typical and frequent ones. Ifyou have developed a more specific phobia, such asclaustrophobia, you may have been stuck in a lift oron the underground and it is therefore probable thatthis triggered your current Anxiety . Think back againto events that have occurred over the past fewmonths now. Have you experienced anything whichcaused you considerable anguish at the time? Having said this, some people who experienced aparticularly traumatic incident during their childhoodfind that their experience stays with them intoadulthood, although they may have consciouslyforgotten it. For example, a child who was frightenedduring a thunderstorm may grow into an adult withan irrational fear of storms.