Anxiety is an emotion most people will experience from time to time. On occasions, it will help you focus or give you an extra boost of energy in crucial moments when you need to perform at the top of your abilities. However, when anxiety is not a temporary state, it can disrupt daily life by causing intense worry, fear or unease and become detrimental to general health and wellbeing.
The way anxiety manifests will be unique to you. It can be experienced as feelings, like excessive fear, restlessness or tension; thoughts, like worries, catastrophising and obsessive thoughts; or physical symptoms like panic attacks, racing heart, hot and cold flushes, tight chest, shortness of breath, difficulty sleeping or headaches.
Anxiety has many ways to present itself. It can be evident across all areas of your life, or in particular circumstances. Social anxiety, for example, will restrict your ability to interact with the world, while performance anxiety will prevent you from reaching your potential. The good news is, it doesn’t have to be that way.
