What Is Anxiety And When Does It Become A Problem For You?

What is anxiety?

Anxiety can be defined as ‘Having regular or uncontrollable worries about many different things in your life, particularly about things that are about to happen or which you think may happen in the future’.

The emotion of anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness or unease about something with an uncertain outcome and it is a perfectly natural reaction.

It is quite normal to feel anxious at times, for example, when you are doing something that you have never done before (for example, joining a new class), when you are taking a big personal step (for example, starting a new job) or when you are dealing with challenging events and changes (for example, moving to a new location).

You will know that your anxiety is a normal emotion if you stop feeling anxious once the situation or event is over.

Normal anxiety can also be very helpful as it has the power to focus attention and motivate you to take action.

When does anxiety become a problem for you?

Anxiety, however, becomes a problem, if it starts to impact your ability to live your life as you would like to. This may include one or more of the following:

* Having very strong feelings of anxiety.

* Feeling anxious for most of the time.

* Your anxiety is out of proportion to the situation or potential threat.

* Avoiding things, people and situations that you think will cause you to feel anxious.

* Feeling that you cannot control your anxiety.

* Being unable to remember not feeling anxious.

* Your anxiety is negatively impacting your day to day life and work.

* Feeling overwhelmed by your anxiety.

If your anxiety has become a problem for you, understand more about anxiety (including what it is, its symptoms and causes), acknowledge that you are actually feeling anxious, explore your anxiety to understand what is causing it, take action to reduce and manage your anxiety and build anxiety management strategies into your life and work so that you are in a much better position to manage your anxiety going forward.

Hopefully the above has got you thinking about anxiety and where you may need to look at taking action to reduce and manage your anxiety.

Anxiety management online course

If you want to explore anxiety further and learn lots of strategies for reducing and managing your anxiety, why not try our online course - Anxiety management for life: how to reduce & manage anxiety. The course is designed to be practical and relevant to real life and is made up of short bite sized animated videos. You can complete the course in your own time at your convenience on your computer, tablet or smartphone.

Author: Liz Makin
Published: June 2022

Makin It Happen has a range of personal development online courses to purchase, created by Liz Makin, including anxiety management, communication, resilience, soft skills, stress management, time management and coaching. Liz Makin also provides personalised business coaching, business mentoring and stress management services to business owners, directors, managers and professionals.

Please email Liz@makinithappen.co.uk to arrange a FREE consultation session to discuss our business coaching, business mentoring and stress management services for business owners, directors, managers and professionals.