There are generally four components that act together to create and maintain anxiety: physiological, cognitive, behavioural, and emotional.

Physiological

The physiological component of anxiety involves physical symptoms and sensations such as:

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In a previous post, we looked at the vicious cycle of anxiety, in which an anxiety-provoking events triggers an anxiety-related thought, feeling, behaviour or physiological symptom, which generates additional anxious thoughts, feelings, behaviours and physiological symptoms.

One of the keys to overcoming anxiety is break this cycle before it begins to gain momentum. We often don’t have control of our initial response to an anxiety-provoking situation, but once we become aware that something has triggered an anxiety-related thought, feeling, behaviour or physiological symptom, then we can choose how we react.

One of the reasons that overcoming anxiety can be so difficult is that anxiety generates vicious cycles involving your physiological, cognitive, behavioural, and emotional domains. We looked at these four components in a previous post. Now we’ll look at how they act together to form vicious cycles that create and maintain anxiety.

The vicious cycle of anxiety begins with an anxiety provoking situation. This anxiety-provoking situation can be something external such as a work commitment, a trip, a social engagement, or any other event happening in the future that you’re worried about. Anxiety can also be provoked by something internal such as a physiological sensation, a thought about something you’re dreading, or an unpleasant emotion. This anxiety-provoking situation then triggers a vicious cycle involving the four realms, as depicted below: Read the rest of this entry »

The Mental Health Foundation in the UK has developed a Be Mindful webpage that is an excellent resource for information about the benefits of mindfulness. The following quote is from their webpage:

How you handle the way you feel plays a big part your mental health. In difficult times, it is not unusual to focus solely on negative thoughts and feelings and become consumed by them.

 

Mindfulness helps you change the way they think, feel and act. It helps you to break free from a downward spiral of negative thought and action, and make positive choices that support your wellbeing. Read the rest of this entry »

Anxiety that can affect us in a variety of different ways. Sometimes there are specific situations that provoke anxiety, such as social situations or phobias. Sometimes we experience acute intense periods of anxiety in the form of panic attacks.

Other times anxiety doesn’t have a specific focus, and but tends to be more constant and persistent. Instead of the intense bursts of anxiety of a panic attack, sometimes anxiety is more chronic, and often takes the form of excessive and seemingly uncontrollable worrying.

This type of anxiety it is called generalized anxiety, and can lead to generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Generalized anxiety disorder is one of the most common reasons people seek counselling and therapy, and is people who are experiencing depression often also experience GAD.

In a previous post, I mentioned the Be Mindful webpage developed by the Mental Health Foundation in the UK. Below are three videos from that webpage describing four people’s experiences with mindfulness and how mindfulness has helped them deal with their depression and anxiety.

In the video below, Kathy Andrews talks about how she found mindfulness to be the piece that was missing from other kinds of therapy.

Among the different types of anxiety, panic attacks can be particularly overwhelming. Panic attacks are intense periods of extreme anxiety that come on suddenly and usually subside within a few minutes, though can sometimes last longer.

People experiencing a panic attack often feel like they’re having a heart attack, or are going to faint or are going crazy. Panic disorder refers to unexpected and repeated panic attacks, accompanied by persistent concern about having another panic attack, or changes in behaviours, such as avoiding certain situations, designed to prevent another panic attack from occurring.

Below are a few videos that provide some information about panic attacks and panic disorder and their treatment. It’s often helpful to know you’re not the only person going through this, and as distressing as they are, panic attacks are quite common.

The benefits you can experience from learning to become more mindful are virtually limitless. Mindfulness allows you to relate to and deal directly with whatever is happening in your life. Instead of struggling to escape, suppress or avoid distressing thoughts and feelings, mindfulness helps you approach whatever is going on in your life, in your thoughts, and with your emotions, without becoming overwhelmed.

When you start being more mindful and start living in the present moment, you’ll experience your life more fully, and become more in touch with yourself, who you are, what is important to you, and what you want out of life.

There are many ways in which mindfulness complements traditional approaches to counselling and therapy. Counselling and therapy involve cultivating awareness and insight into your life and the issues you’re facing, exploring your patterns of thinking, and your feelings and emotions, how these are affecting you, and learning to handle difficult thoughts and emotions.

Mindfulness helps facilitate these processes by slowing down your mind, and using this calmer, clearer mind to allow you to get in touch with you inner wisdom and gain fresh perspective and understanding about your self, your life, and the issues you’re dealing with.