The Reward is the Journey: Don't panic panic

Friday 26 February 2016

Don't panic panic

Anxiety is on the up. It makes appearances ever more regularly amongst my clients/patients.* It comes in different guises: sometimes attaching itself to certain triggers, at other times preferring to float more freely.

Anxiety is troublesome. It demands attention yet does not like to be examined. Anxiety does not always make sense. There is often little value in seeking to ascertain its aetiology as, regularly, there will not be an obvious cause-and-effect in action.

First things first. Anxiety needs to be put in its place. Therapy can be extremely helpful in right-sizing panic when anxiety has become unmanageable.

As a therapist supporting those for whom anxiety has got out of control, it is useful for me to understand what seems to be triggering anxious symptoms and how the individual experiences these. No two anxiety presentations are identical, but there are patterns and traits I have become all too familiar with.

Anxiety is a natural response that can get out of sync with the triggers that it should naturally follow. There are a number of causes that can contribute to the development of anxiety and there exist powerful relationships between anxiety, stress, and depression.

Anxiety can be better managed once it is understood. Coming to understand how it works can be enormously liberating. Working out some strategies for better containment of anxiety provoking situations and triggers and self soothing responses can promote resilience and increase the likelihood that panic attacks will become a thing of the past.

*I leave it to those who walk into my consulting room to self-define.