When Worry Takes the Wheel
When was the last time your heart started racing over an upcoming presentation? Or maybe you found yourself lying awake at 3 AM, your mind spinning with "what-if" scenarios about tomorrow's meeting? If these experiences sound familiar, you're about to understand why anxiety often feels like it has a life of its own.
Today, I want to explore anxiety through the lens of both science and lived experience. While discussing cases with Ashley, I was struck by how often anxiety presents not just as worry, but as a complex web of physical sensations, thoughts, and behaviors that can feel overwhelming and can become debilitating if left untreated.
Understanding Anxiety: More Than Just Worry
The DSM-5-TR, our clinical guide for understanding mental health conditions, paints a detailed picture of what we call Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). But before we dive into the clinical aspects, let's acknowledge something important: anxiety itself is a normal human experience. When experienced in small amounts, it actually helps us to learn, perform, can keep us safe, and can help us make decisions that match our values. It's when anxiety begins to take over our daily lives that we need to pay attention.
Think about your own experience with anxiety for a moment:
How does it show up in your body? What thoughts tend to accompany it? How does it influence your decisions?
Jot down your answers – we'll come back to them as we explore this together.
The Colors of Anxiety: Real-World Impact
Let's break down how anxiety typically manifests in daily life. Many people experience similar symptoms of anxiety:
Physical Symptoms: People have described anxiety as "a constant humming in my body," with muscle tension, restlessness, and difficulty sleeping.
These aren't just random symptoms – they're part of our body's natural alarm system, trying to protect us from perceived threats.
Thought Patterns: Many people will experience:
Constant planning for worst-case scenarios
Having difficulty controlling worry
Experience racing thoughts about different responsibilities in life
The interesting thing about anxiety is how it creates a self-reinforcing cycle. The more we worry, the more our body responds, which then leads to more worry. It's like a feedback loop that can feel impossible to break.
Are you finding it difficult to control your worry about multiple areas of life? Do you notice physical symptoms like restlessness, fatigue, or tension? Has anxiety been interfering with your sleep or concentration?
Generalized Anxiety Disorder involves excessive anxiety and worry occurring more days than not for at least 6 months. But here's what's important to understand: you don't need to meet all the clinical criteria to benefit from understanding and managing anxiety.
How Therapy Can Help
Anxiety can feel like a constant companion that whispers worst-case scenarios and keeps your mind racing, but therapy offers a safe space to explore and understand these overwhelming. In therapy sessions, we can work to identify practical tools and strategies to manage anxiety symptoms, from breathing techniques that calm your nervous system to cognitive behavioral approaches that help you challenge anxious thoughts. We can work with you to uncover the root causes of your anxiety, whether they stem from past experiences, current stressors, or patterns of thinking that have developed over time. We provide evidence-based techniques tailored to your specific situation and help you build a personalized toolkit for managing anxiety both in and outside of sessions. Most importantly, therapy offers something invaluable for anyone struggling with anxiety: the knowledge that you don't have to face it alone, and that with the right support and guidance, you can develop the skills to live a fuller life even when anxiety tries to hold you back.
Send Us a Message
If you resonate with anything here, or you are interested in knowing more about how therapy can help, please send us a message and we can start the conversation!