Anxiety
Anxiety is a normal emotion, and everyone experiences anxiety. Humans and animals experience this emotion and throughout history it was an emotion that prepared people to respond to some kind of threat. The response may be to run, or to attack, or to freeze and submit. Today, the threats are not life threatening, so there are times when this emotion is overkill, but we all experience the emotion at some point.
Anxiety can be worse when we have been through traumatic life events and witnessed trauma. There are many terrible things happening all over the world and they can feed anxiety and a sense of powerlessness.
Anxiety symptoms can include, racing thoughts, excessive worry, feeling uncoordinated, a fast-pounding heart rate, sweaty palms, dizziness, sleep disturbance, high blood pressure, inability to make a decision and/or to concentrate, nightmares, and nausea.
There are many stressors surrounding us, and if there is repeated exposure to anxiety we can become unwell and find life distressing. Unfortunately, we can sometimes develop an anxiety condition: there is generalised anxiety disorder, panic disorder (sometimes with agoraphobia), social phobia or specific phobia, obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and acute stress disorder. The psychologists at The Psychology Space are experienced with treating these conditions.