What are the Symptoms of Anxiety?

Among the most common are:

  • A sense of unease, tension, fear, doom or worry – sometimes linked to specific situations but sometimes hard to pin down
  • The feelings may be uncontrollable, intrusive, obsessive and out of proportion to a given situation
  • Restlessness, tension and being on edge
  • Irritability
  • Sleep problems
  • Difficulty concentrating
  • Fatigue
  • Loss of confidence
  • Muscle tension
  • Difficulty breathing
  • Sweating
  • Racing heartbeat

As I’ve said, anxiety is also linked to panic attacks, phobias, obsessive-compulsive behaviour and PTSD.

Difficulty with thinking about anxiety is that it manifests in different ways and has different causes. It can include generalized anxiety, social anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, obsessive-compulsive behaviour and Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Appropriate anxiety can be caused by experiences like redundancy, ageing, bullying or cancer but I’m thinking in this section about entrenched anxiety.

Anxiety help Surrey offers both individual and group psychotherapy sessions so you can decide which one works best for you.

How Do I Know If I Suffer?

There are quite a few websites providing tests for anxiety. It’s worth being aware, though, that diagnosing oneself can be misleading. It’s always a good idea to talk to a specialist and your doctor is a good first port of call. Symptoms may also emanate from more than one cause or from a different cause.

If you have some of the symptoms on the list and if they persist or are recurrent, it may be that you are suffering from anxiety. Other indications can include the need for frequent reassurance, being overly alert, finding it hard to relax, trembling, nausea, digestive problems and lightheadedness. If this is the case, it is important to seek anxiety help Surrey or your book in with your GP.

What Are The Causes?

Anxiety-related conditions are diverse and have diverse causes. There’s probably something different going on in a person who feels trapped at cocktail parties and one who’s obsessively hoarding large quantities of garden furniture. Or one who constantly worries. But there are common denominators. There’s some evidence of a biological element in anxiety. And at the psychological level, the universal factor is a perceived looming threat to safety – perhaps quite unconscious.

How We Can Help Your Anxiety in Surrey

There are different approaches to treating anxiety, including analytic psychotherapy. Bear in mind that psychotherapy usually doesn’t offer rapid change and that, as with most types of therapy, successful treatment can’t be guaranteed. Psychotherapy goes to the roots of conditions (often unconscious) and working with these takes time. But our anxiety counselling aims for long-lasting effects. It’s sometimes the case that, where appropriate, people find psychotherapy easier if they are on medication prescribed by their GP.