Identifying If Anxiety Is Taking Control of Your Life
As usual, as it is to experience anxiety, many folks have an issue recognizing when their anxiety has evolved into a severe and life-controlling problem.
Often, anxiety issues escalate over time, and people most affected by it don’t realize how much of their lives are determined by being anxious.
“If you’ve lived with anxiety problems for a long time, you may be accustomed to what feeling highly anxious is like.”
As you think this way on a routine basis, it doesn’t seem strange or unusual to you – since that’s how you operate, being that anxious feels normal.
However ordinary it may seem, allowing anxiety to take control of your life is detrimental to your mental, spiritual, and physical health.
Consider the following signs to determine if stress is taking control of your life.
Sign 1: You actively decline or avoid certain situations because your anxiety is the ultimate factor that convinces you to stay away from them.
When your anxiety calls the main shots about what you will and will not do, it may take control of your life. For example, suppose you are presented with an attractive new opportunity but feel terrified of everything that could go wrong to let yourself experience the option.
In that case, your anxiety is the determining factor in that situation.
Allowing your anxiety to be the main deciding factor when you are presented with new situations or opportunities is depressing. When this happens, your fears control what happens in your life instead of you.
Sign 2: You can feel the physical symptoms of anxiety regularly.
Many people associate anxiety problems strictly with mental health, but people struggling with anxiety also know it creates a lot of uncomfortable physical sensations in the body.
If you’re regularly experiencing physical discomfort due to anxiety, your anxiety is taking control of your life. Some examples of this include…
● Erratic, irregular sleeping patterns; difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
● Headaches, agitated ones
● Muscle aches and body soreness
● Stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea
● Rapid breathing, shortness of breath
● High blood pressure, increased heart rate
● Weakness or fatigue
● Tingling or numbness
● Dry mouth
● Feeling lightheaded or faint
“While people struggling with anxiety won’t necessarily experience all these symptoms, they may experience a sampling of them.”
If these symptoms become persistent enough to begin affecting your regular, daily life, then the anxiety is taking control of how you’re feeling.
Sign 3: You find it nearly impossible to focus or concentrate on anything for an extended period.
Whether it’s a significant project at work, a great book, or a fun hangout with friends, you struggle to pay attention to what’s happening in front of you – you may even find yourself “spacing out” or completely missing parts conversations happening that involve you.
This inability to focus isn’t only frightening, but it’s also incredibly inconvenient. When you can’t focus on what needs your attention now, it can cause you to forget important details, miss deadlines, and cause inconvenience for yourself and others.
Another common complaint about focus and concentration with anxiety is the concept of “brain fog” – for example, you may immediately forget the information you just learned or forget why you walked into a room. Your head may feel fuzzy and cloudy, making it difficult to follow your train of thought.
If you notice that your focus and concentration are regularly lacking, no matter how that may present, it may be a telltale sign that your anxiety is taking control of your life.
Sign 4: You can identify specific triggers that send your anxiety into a complex (if not impossible) spiral to stop.
Many people experience anxiety because of exposure to a trigger. Triggers are stimuli that cause a specific reaction within a person. Typically, people develop these anxious reactions to triggers due to previous events that taught them to feel frightened and worried about themselves.
For example, a person raised in an abusive household may find people speaking in loud voices triggering, even though they may no longer live in that household.
When someone uses a loud, shouting voice, they remember their abusive childhood home, and their anxiety rises as an automatic reflex despite not being in a dangerous or scary situation.
“People develop a wide variety of triggers for various reasons.”
However, if your motivations are causing you to experience painful, difficult-to-manage anxiety, your anxiety may take control of your life.
This is especially true if it’s difficult to avoid exposure to a trigger in your daily routine. For example, people around you could start yelling and shouting – you can’t control what others will do.
Still, if their actions cause you to spiral into an anxiety attack immediately, it may signal that you need professional help to conquer the trigger for good.
Sign 5: Your feelings of anxiety don’t conclude after a specific event passes.
Feeling anxiety over upcoming events is a typical human experience. For example, pretend you’re going to give an important presentation in a class.
You feel your anxiety rising to lead to the display – you know your teacher, and all your classmates will be watching. The show is also worth a big chunk of your final grade in the class.
“All these factors cause you to feel incredibly anxious leading up to your presentation date.”
Feeling anxiety about this sort of upcoming event is expected. However, if your anxiety persists even after the event, you may have an issue with fear controlling your life.
Typically, anxious feelings fade once significant events like this end. If you feel like your anxiety symptoms continue to persist regularly with no signs of stopping or slowing down, it may be taking control of your life.
References:
https://www.piedmont.org/living-better/signs-you-have-too-much-anxiety
https://www.verywellmind.com/anxiety-how-much-is-too-much-1393146
