Someone with anxiety will always feel stranded on an island of their thoughts while being surrounded by obsessive ideas that never seem to end. Such experiences are exhausting, and due to this, people with anxiety often are not in touch with reality.
While looking for a therapist in New York City, you should find someone who can help you with anxiety, find a stable footing, and gain control over your thinking patterns. And after this, you can expect a gradual recovery from anxiety and the perception of thoughts affected by this. Anxiety has a direct impact on our emotional health, making it challenging for an individual to focus on what matters. That is why having professional support is important.
Anxiety and Brain
Our body reacts to uncomfortable situations and stresses in various ways, like increased heart rate, rapid breathing, and excessive sweating. Sometimes, even if we are not in a stressful situation, the body’s flight or fight response can make it nearly impossible to center one’s focus and go about their day without feeling like they are on the edge. Prolonged exposure to such intense emotions can make it challenging to break the thinking pattern. As such, the person always looks at things in a worried and exaggerated manner.
When trying to understand how anxiety affects the brain, it is often thought that the emotional processing center gets affected instead of the higher cognitive centers. Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) also significantly decreases inhibitory signaling, causing the imbalance.
Not So Obvious Signs To Look For
Anxiety can show up in different aspects of our lives. Be it deciding what to have for dinner or making a plan for the weekend. Let’s understand how anxiety affects us on a deeper level:
Psychological Symptoms
Commonly observed psychological symptoms of anxiety include:
- Getting distracted easily – Anxiety can negatively affect your ability to concentrate, making it easier for a person to get distracted even by the slightest of things. This, in return, increases the time a person will take to complete the task at hand.
- Staying organized is difficult – It is common for people with anxiety to forget where they have kept their belongings. Due to this challenge, people with it often find it difficult to organize their belongings. These instances are also very frustrating, eventually discouraging a person from choosing to stay organized.
- Decisions are tough to make – Brains of people with anxiety are actively overthinking and analyzing everything in utmost detail. Be it the conversation they recently had with their neighbors or an extra punctuation mark in the text they received from their loved ones. The thoughts seeding from anxiety are often pessimistic, making it challenging for a person to decide what they need to do.
- Getting overwhelmed – The never-ending chain of thoughts makes it almost impossible for a person with anxiety to stop and take a moment’s pause to rationalize what they want. The constant loop of ifs and buts makes it challenging to process information clearly, eventually leading to the brain working more than its capacity.
- Intrusive thoughts – Intrusive thoughts are often disturbing and, in some cases, frightening. Even when everyone has thoughts and is thinking something every time, intrusive thoughts make it seem like something’s wrong with you and not everyone thinks the way you do. Such thoughts are discouraging and make it challenging to have a conversation without having thoughts like ‘They definitely hate you’ or ‘Are you even listening to yourself.’
Physical Symptoms of Anxiety
The constant fight or flight mode a person lives in makes it difficult for them to let go. Physical symptoms include:
- Dizziness
- Loss of appetite
- Teeth grinding
- Muscle tension and pain
- Frequent headaches
Bottomline
Anxiety is often deeply rooted in a person, making it challenging for them to live life to the fullest. Recognizing early signs and getting treatment is immensely beneficial, as is learning how not to acknowledge negative thoughts and beliefs. It will take time to get used to such healthy coping mechanisms, but the overall positive effects will be worthwhile.
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