How can Anxiety Impact your Life?

For people dealing with anxiety, things can often feel much harder than they used to. Anxiety symptoms can cause us a lot of discomfort, particularly when we are not quite aware of what causes them, and where they are coming from. Many people compare the effects of an anxiety disorder to an invisible chronic illness – one that makes their day to day life challenging and stressful. The good news is that anxiety is very treatable, and getting the right diagnosis and treatment can be life-changing! Here is an overview of how anxiety symptoms may have impacted your life, and what you can do to start to reverse or manage these effects. 

Avoidance 

One of the major ways that anxiety can affect our lives is through avoidance – whether this is skipping social events, cancelling plans or staying home from work or school because you’re feeling anxious. Avoidance is an understandable reaction to anxiety – after all, we temporarily feel better when we avoid the thing that is making us feel anxious – but it can cause serious problems in our day to day lives. 

Avoidance is one of the things that keeps anxiety going, since we can get drawn into a vicious cycle of feeling anxious about something, avoiding it, and then feeling even more anxious the next time we need to do it. Often at the centre of really serious anxiety conditions is a pattern of avoidance – and once that is broken, we can find that things start to improve rapidly.

Breaking the cycle of avoidance gives us the chance to do the anxiety-provoking thing, and learn that it really isn’t so bad. Sometimes we can spend months avoiding doing something, only to find that when we’re finally forced to do it, we end up enduring much less discomfort than the months of avoidance have caused us! 

Discomfort/Hypervigilance 

Anxiety symptoms can lead to general feelings of discomfort – whether this is uncomfortable physical sensations such as chest pain, headaches, stomach aches or a feeling of dread – as well as hypervigilance, or an increased awareness of our bodily sensations.

People who are prone to anxiety can be highly attuned to their body’s responses, and so may notice their heart beating quickly and start to worry about this – thus creating more anxiety – and an even faster heartbeat! People who have had panic attacks, in particular, will pay a lot of attention to these bodily symptoms, and their focus on their body’s responses can actually be counterproductive, since it can create even more anxiety. 

Sleep & Energy Issues

It makes a lot of sense that, if we are in ‘fight or flight’ mode for a lot of the time, that we’re going to be feeling less than wonderful in our day to day life. Some people who are dealing with anxiety might have a hard time switching off at the end of the day, and won’t be able to get to sleep due to the adrenaline and cortisol coursing through their system.

Others might feel frazzled and burnt out during stressful times, and struggle to find the energy to do things like socialise or do their hobbies – all their energy has been spent on worrying or avoiding the anxiety-provoking thing. 

Gastro issues/Digestion

Anxiety impacts our nervous and parasympathetic nervous systems, and when we are feeling stressed or anxious, those automatic functions like digestion tend to get neglected – since our bodies are focused on whatever is causing the anxiety.

Some people who are dealing with anxiety will report nausea and digestive issues, or may be diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), an uncomfortable condition that is made worse by stress and new situations. The symptoms of IBS can also cause more anxiety, since we can worry about finding a toilet or about being in pain and unable to go about daily activities. 

Solutions

If one or more of these points applies to you, it is clear that anxiety is having an impact on you, and is likely stopping you from getting the most out of your day to day life. As mentioned, when anxiety is untreated, it can result in a pattern of avoidance that – while it feels like it is helping – actually makes things a lot worse.

Getting some help, whether from a doctor or therapist, can make a big difference to how you are feeling, and help you to break the cycle. Apps such as Mind Ease can also be helpful as an anxiety management tool, since it has exercises that are designed to be used when you are feeling anxious or on edge.

You don’t need to live with overwhelming symptoms of anxiety, particularly ones that cause you a lot of discomfort and pain – and we recommend you seek out some professional support today. 

If you’d like reliable relief from anxiety, you can install Mind Ease for free here.