Do you have an anxiety disorder?

There are two types of anxiety disorders; situational and generalized. Situational anxiety occurs only in specific situations or around certain people. For example, social anxiety happens when we are going to be with people we don’t know or in unfamiliar settings. Social anxiety can also occur if the group size for a social event or setting for a social event is one that we do not feel comfortable in. Another type of situational anxiety is claustrophobia. Generalized anxiety usually doesn’t have an immediately identifiable cause and comes out of nowhere, leaving us feeling blindsided and overwhelmed. How we deal with situational versus general anxiety has some cross over, but there are also unique tools for each.

For situational anxiety, there are a few things that tend to help my clients overcome and manage the impact each situation has on them. For extroverts, those who find that interacting with people leaves the feeling rejuvenated, usually find having people whose energy they enjoy in those situations or the ability to tell someone whose energy they enjoy about the situation before and after to be helpful. This provides a social anchor and gives extroverts a bit of a boost in these situations. For introverts, those who find interacting with people as an energy drain, rehearsing the situation beforehand and imagining ways in which they can be successful in the dynamic will improve the belief that the situation will be manageable and reduce anxiety.

General anxiety hits with seemingly no rhyme or reason until we start attending to what we are thinking about before, during, and after anxiety spikes. Over time a pattern will emerge, and we can begin to see the types of things that increase our ambient or general anxiety levels. Once we identify our triggers, we can deconstruct or reverse engineer our anxiety and begin to self soothe. The start of the process and paying attention to the anxious thoughts will be challenging at first , but as we learn to be an observer of our anxiety, we will learn how to be the master of anxiety and regain control of our emotional space.

Posted on Monday: 12 June, 2023