Anxiety Symptoms

While there are several different types of anxiety conditions, people experiencing a problematic level of anxiety commonly experience:

Physical symptoms of Anxiety

• Fast beating or irregular heartbeat

• Faster breathing

• Tension in their muscles/body

• Feeling restless or on edge

• Feeling hot or cold/chills

• Sweating (more than usual)

• Tightness in the chest

• Panic attacks

Psychological symptoms of Anxiety

• A sense dread or something bad about to happen

• Excessive worrying

• Fearing the worst outcome

• Thinking obsessively/ruminating about bad experiences or a situation

Avoidance

• Avoiding situations that cause anxiety

What impact can Anxiety have on your life?

Unfortunately when anxiety becomes overwhelming or starts to stop us from living life freely it can affect our relationships with friends, family, and loved ones, can stop us from trying new things or taking on new opportunities, can stop us from enjoying ourselves, and can even affect how we perform at school, university or in our jobs.

If you are experiencing anxiety it is important to see your GP or speak to a psychologist so as to get some additional support to learn strategies for helping you overcome anxiety, and stop it from getting in the way of living life as you’d like it! It’s also really great to consider getting support early if you can so as to limit how much your anxiety interferes with your life and to regain your freedom and happiness.

Types of Anxiety Disorders

So as to inform our treatment approach, psychologists consider whether someone’s anxiety difficulties may have become significant enough to diagnose an anxiety disorder. Listed below are some of the common anxiety disorders and what the main features of each are.

Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

• Worries about lots of different things.

• Can feel anxious on most days, even when they can’t really think of a reason for it

Social Anxiety

• Experiences feeling self-consciousness when around other people

• Is afraid of being criticised, embarrassed or humiliated by or in front of other people

• Can experience these fears in everyday social situations (e.g. when meeting new people, eating or drinking in front of others, standing up for themselves, answering questions or when it’s there turn to speak in their class/work environments ).

Specific Phobia

• Is extremely fearful about a particular object or situation

• May ‘do anything’ to avoid the feared object or situation

• Feared objects and situations can be almost anything, but more common ones include medical needles, flying in a plane, and dogs.

Panic Disorder

• experiences panic attacks, which are unexpected and repeated episodes of intense and overwhelming fear.

• Experiences physical symptoms such as heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness/light-headedness, chest pain, and sweating associated with having a panic attack.

• May think they are having a heart attack or about to die when having a panic attack due to these physical symptoms.

• Experiences repeated panic attacks (or is very fearful of having them) for more than a month.

There are other conditions where anxiety symptoms are also experienced, such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).