Symptoms of Anxiety: Knowing The Signs & Symptoms

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Knowing the signs and symptoms of anxiety is important. Sometimes you may be feeling a particular way or showing a symptom, but are unable to understand what is going on. When you’re able to notice and recognise symptoms, you can take the next steps onto reducing anxiety. 

The symptoms of anxiety:

Rapid breathing. When anxious, your breathing rapidly increases. Because your amygdala is hyperactive (the part of the brain that regulates emotions) and highly stimulated, you may be feeling a range of emotions. You feel nervous, scared, worried and uncertain. As a result, you feel hyper and start breathing heavily. This is why breathing exercises are a great way to reduce anxiety.

Headaches. When anxious, there’s a lot of cortisol in your body. This leads to a constriction of your blood vessels and tightness. As result, the reduced blood flow can cause headaches. In case after something undesired or worrying occurs, you find yourself experiencing a headache, it could be those anxious feelings in your brain causing it.

Excessive sweating. Anxiety and anxious thoughts lead to your body producing more adrenaline. This triggers the fight and flight response in your body. The presence of adrenaline causes blood vessels to narrow and activate your sweat glands. As a result, you start to sweat a lot. Furthermore, because you are feeling nervous or scared when anxious, that adds to your sweating. Whenever your mind is racing, you feel stressed or anxious, excessive sweating is common.

Irritability. When anxious, you’re feeling a range of emotions and not feeling too great. As a result, you may be more irritable and annoyed. For whatever reason you may be anxious, even the slightest inconveniences may annoy you more than normal.

Extreme fear or worry. Anxiety is caused by heightened fear or worry. When you’re feeling anxious, it’s normal to be feeling very scared or worried about things. It could be immediate, something about the future or have no reason at all. Remember, your anxiety need not have a reason and you could be scared or worried without cause.

Trouble focusing. When anxious, there’s so many thoughts running through your mind. As a result, you’re unable to concentrate on what is in front of you and your focus levels drop. You feel restless, scared and your attention is just not there. In case you’re anxious about a meeting or a work deadline and are unable to focus, balancing your thoughts and taking measures to reduce anxiety will help you be more productive! In fact, you can even try these hacks to boost productivity when working under pressure.

Anxiety manifests itself in various ways, it’s different for everyone. These are just some of the symptoms and you should be able to recognise them, so you can take measures to reduce anxiety. Meditation, the food you eat and gratitude are simple and effective ways to reduce anxiety.

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