Worry is one of the most common psychological problems experienced. One in every ten people visits their doctor because of anxiety and anxiety-related worries.
We clearly feel the effects of anxiety on both our mind and body.
Alongside fear, apprehension, panic, and a state of being constantly on alert, physical reactions such as muscle tension, sweating, trembling, rapid breathing, diarrhoea, back pain, and irregular heartbeats are among the most common symptoms. People often describe anxiety using everyday expressions such as feeling tense, agitated, panicky, overly cautious, having one’s heart in one’s mouth, becoming clumsy or confused, or feeling “butterflies” in the stomach.
Anxiety and stress are actually a “healthy” response, and everyone may experience these symptoms in moments of danger or stressful situations. When we are anxious, our body begins to work faster and produces the reactions described above. This heightened activity and physical change are meant to prepare the person for any potential threat. Many studies have shown that moderate, balanced levels of stress and anxiety can have positive effects on performance. For example, a student who needs to achieve a good grade in an important exam experiencing no stress or anxiety at all would not be a positive sign.
If anxiety continues despite there being no real danger, or long after a stressful situation has passed, this points to a problematic condition. Naturally, if your body starts working at high speed when no reaction is actually required, this becomes uncomfortable and concerning. At such times, people inevitably focus only on the negative and disadvantageous aspects of the physical changes occurring in the body.
Main factors that maintain anxiety and worry
Confusion about whether a distressing situation is a real problem or a hypothetical, assumption-based worry.
Intolerance of uncertainty and attempts to eliminate all existing or potential uncertainties through mental or observable behaviours believed to create certainty.
A negative problem-solving orientation. This includes negative and inaccurate judgements about both one’s own abilities and the problem itself.
Positive beliefs about anxiety and the anxiety process—believing that anxiety is actually helpful and that something terrible would happen without it.
Negative beliefs about anxiety and the anxiety process—believing that anxiety and worry are uncontrollable and will seriously damage the mind, such as the fear of “losing one’s mind”.
Cognitive avoidance behaviours, such as suppressing thoughts when a feared idea arises, distracting oneself, or trying to replace it with other thoughts.
For individuals who use all or several of the methods listed above, experiencing anxiety problems becomes almost inevitable. In such situations, the symptoms experienced have an unnecessarily negative impact on daily life and lead to further difficulties. Learning, on an individual level, the causes of anxiety, how it emerges, and how it maintains itself through vicious cycles—and learning how to “manage” it—becomes an unavoidable necessity.
Anxiety Can Be Managed
It is important to remember that stress and anxiety are normal reactions. For this reason, it is not possible to eliminate anxiety completely from our lives. The only people who have entirely removed anxiety and fear from their lives can be found in cemeteries. While we may not be able to remove it completely, we can decide how we respond to it.
What matters is understanding how unnecessary anxiety can be and recognising that it is, in fact, a manageable process—and being able to test this in practice. Changing beliefs and behaviours learned over many years is not easy. The natural course of anxiety often pushes people towards impatience and a desire for immediate, definitive results, which unfortunately tends to backfire.
However, it is possible to manage and control anxiety in a healthy way, and doing so can help us live our lives more productively.