Smart Ways to Recognize and Break the Cycle of Anxiety
Everybody experiences fear and nervousness from time to time. Anxiety, on the other hand, is so much more than simple worry. Anxiety is a persistent and often overwhelming feeling of worry or fear that can significantly impact daily life. According to the American Psychology Association, anxiety is often characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical changes like increased blood pressure. Recognizing and breaking the cycle of anxiety involves understanding its triggers and symptoms and implementing effective coping strategies.
Symptoms Of Anxiety
Anxiety symptoms include feeling tense, nervous, or angry all of the time and having difficulty concentrating or paying attention. Moreover, it also includes feeling "on edge," experiencing greater fatigue and problems sleeping, and seeing either an increase or decrease in appetite. Teenagers and adults can also suffer physical symptoms of anxiety, such as a racing heart, quicker or shallow breathing, nausea, lightheadedness, dizziness, or shivering.
Because anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues can coexist and share some symptoms, understanding the differences between these conditions is critical. The main difference between anxiety and depression, for example, is the general mood. While anxiety causes nervousness and stress, depression causes sadness and hopelessness.
What Is the Cycle of Anxiety?
The cycle of anxiety begins when a circumstance triggers anxiety symptoms and the release of stress hormones. This causes the body to go into "fight or flight." To alleviate these unpleasant symptoms, the individual avoids the situation, signaling to their body that they are no longer in danger, resulting in a sense of relief. However, this relief is just brief; with time, the anxiety grows, and avoidance increases.
Understanding the various phases of anxiety is crucial for recognizing how anxiety manifests and progresses over time. By identifying these stages, individuals can implement targeted strategies to break the cycle and manage their symptoms more effectively.
#1 Triggering Anxiety
The cycle of anxiety starts with triggers. Considering that, it’s no wonder the first step in managing anxiety is identifying what triggers it. Triggers might include specific situations, places, people, or even thoughts that provoke stress or anxiety. Keeping a journal to record times when you experience anxiety might help you uncover patterns and pinpoint specific causes.
#2 Physical Symptoms
After the triggering event, symptoms start to appear. While we have already covered the most common symptoms of anxiety, it’s important to highlight that different people experience anxiety in different ways. While some may feel a pounding or racing heart and sweating, others might experience tingly or numb hands, chest discomfort, and even nausea or vomiting. In any case, these symptoms can be quite taxing.
#3 Recognition of Symptoms
While physical symptoms immediately indicate that anxiety is present, being able to recognize anxiety-producing ideas at the "moment of birth" is critical to recognize and break the cycle of anxiety before it takes hold. In other words, you can choose to "feed" the thought and keep it alive or "starve" the anxiety by not paying attention to it.
Negative thoughts affect the limbic system, which controls the fight, flight or freeze response. As a result, recognizing negative thinking and refusing to succumb to its demands is a method of allowing yourself time to reflect on what is truly going on. This allows you to prevent the limbic system from fully activating.
#4 Short-Term Relief
Short-term relief can be achieved when you postpone dealing with the fundamental variables that cause the anxiety cycle and instead apply a "band-aid" to it. Many people find that diverting themselves by cleaning or doing “self-care” activities such as shopping provides them a short break from anxiety. However, this only leads them to avoid questioning the thoughts that fuel the anxiety cycle. Thus, the anxiousness will still return after some time.
As you promote the behaviors that provide short-term relief, you’re more likely to believe that cleaning or buying things makes you happy and is the solution to anxiety. As a result, you repeat these behaviors frequently. Instead of solving your anxiety, this can lead to compulsive cleaning or shopping sprees where you buy unnecessary items.
#5 Long-Term Consequences
The long-term effects of repeating the anxiety cycle can be harmful to your mental, emotional, and physical health. Avoiding managing anxiety can have many negative effects, such as depression, trouble sleeping, and exhaustion. Finally, as a way of dealing with anxiety, some people even turn to drugs and alcohol.
How to Break the Cycle of Anxiety
It's important to examine the data supporting your anxiety by taking the position of a judge, considering both sides of a dispute. For example, to investigate the basis for your anxieties, ask yourself the following questions:
What am I most frightened will happen?
What would be the worst-case scenario?
Once you've determined what you're most scared of, consider the following questions:
How likely is the dreaded outcome?
How likely are the other options?
What would I do if a poor outcome occurred?
The purpose of reviewing this information is to help you realize that your feared scenario is not unavoidable. When you're caught in a cycle of anxiety, you might only consider the worst-case scenario and disregard all other options. The other crucial component of this exercise is to imagine what you could do if the feared scenario materializes. You will feel more assured in your management skills if you already have a plan of action in place.
Other Things to Consider
You can confront your concerns and control your anxiety by using various coping mechanisms. Some of the ways you can deal with your anxieties in the present are by attempting mindful therapy or meditating. Meditation is a technique in which you let go of your thoughts and concentrate on a single subject. You can direct your attention to sounds in your surroundings, your breathing, or an affirmation. Since meditating reduces the stress reaction in the body, this can be beneficial when you're anxious and can work as a preventative precaution when you're at ease.
In Conclusion - Knowing Signs of Anxiety
Katie Petty
Anxiety Therapist
It’s not always easy to recognize and break the cycle of anxiety, especially while you’re still in it. However, by reading up on this subject, reexamining your feelings, and asking yourself questions, you can try to avoid getting stuck in this cycle again. And if you don’t succeed from the start, don’t be too hard on yourself. Working on your anxiety takes time.