What Produces Anxiety and How To Handle it Better

Anyone need to let off some steam? Let me go first; because just a little while ago, I could not get something done that was suppose to work exactly like the instructions said, it didn’t and there was no reason for it not to. So guess what; I am sure I developed some “anxiety”. Why? Well, I think it is because we humans have a tendency to react to things that give us resistance. Since there was nothing inaccurate about the process of what I was doing; I began to get frustrated and full of tension because it was suppose to work. Suppose to; so I quit and decided to write this hub on “anxiety”.

There is so much stress in life at this point in history; we have a lot of worries which some time ago we did not have. A long time ago people had something called “job stability”. It doesn’t exist anymore except for teachers, nurses, and doctors to name a few, but for the average American…it does not exist. We have people who do not have jobs of their choice; they have had to take jobs to make ends meet, not necessarily what they would want to do or what their training is in. We have higher gas prices, food prices are constantly on the rise, insurance premiums are higher than they have ever been and many more situations which have changed within the last five to ten years. It takes so much just to pay the normal expenses each month in any household.

These are situations that have added to the normal everyday stress of life. When all of this coupled with anything that is devastating; such as a relationship gone wrong, a family death, a child who needs fixing and some other things which we are never prepared for that hits us; we want to fall apart or should I say; scream. This is a sign we are under too much pressure and living our life in Anxiety.

Worry: Worry is one of the hardest things I think that we need to relieve our self from. If we can’t do anything about something; why worry? It does not resolve a situation or produce the correct outcome of anything.

Fear: We are afraid of everything; this day and time and for good reason it seems, but we cannot live our life in constant fear because if we think along this line too long; it will have a way of coming more forcefully into our life. We are afraid we are going to lose our health plan as it is today. We are afraid that the American as we know it is gone forever. We are afraid that our children will not be able to live a decent life with all the changes in America. Then of course we have the normal fears sometimes which keep us from excelling in anything. Fear can destroy for our efforts of trying to live our life. This is when we must find some a way to eliminate our fears.

Burdens: Sometimes we have a mental weight with our many facets of life. We think we can carry it all by our self and we do not need anyone to help. We have too much to do in too little time to get it done, yet we are all hung up on making an impression that we are indispensable. If we were able to let go of some of the responsibility at home, at work, and in our friendships and give “us” some time to relieve our minds from having so much to do….we could relax more and have less “Anxiety”. Don’t you think?

Accountability: We think we are accountable to everyone sometimes. As we grow older, we are accountable to our children, our parents, the church etc. etc…It is true we have so much that we must be accountable to but we must know who our priority is and some times let the other go. Even thought it might make us look a little lazy??? Not really, one must do what is necessary to live their life in a more constant way and less stressful way.

Hardships and Misfortune: We are in a state of having to deal with things we did not some time ago. There used to as stated above more job stability. With individuals losing their job which creates for them their livelihood; it is easy to become overwhelmed and anxious with necessary worries. A vast amount of people now are losing their homes due to not being able to pay the payments and a lot of the time it is due to job loses. These above are a few things which cause us stress and anxiety, only a few….

When I took some nursing courses a long time ago…I learned a lot about myself and life. The following is given for ways to learn about and recognize anxiety.

Symptoms of anxiety include: exhaustion, sleep problems, tension headaches, constant worry, dark circles under the eyes, bowel disturbances, lowered immure function, irritability or anger outbursts and lack of concentration etc.

Coping With Anxiety; how do we do it? We learn that the body undergoes three stages of stress:

Fight or Flight: The beginning stage and the body feels threatened danger. The body has a surge of energy to overtake the body, enabling a person to fight off the threat or flee from the danger at hand.

Resistance: This stage comes when the danger remains beyond the fight or flight period. The body secretes several hormones in order to mobilize the body during long-term stress.

Exhaustion: If the body successfully completes the first two stages, it will enter the third stage, exhaustion. This is a time when the fatigued body replenishes itself. Normally when we are exhausted, we must rest for a period to renew ourselves and bring us back to the normal self.

What we can learn...

It has been said that if a person can get their composure back with a way to live without being constantly in uproar about what “might” happen down the road, life can be lived for today more normal and without as much stress and anxiety.

Today is the day we are living and we do not control tomorrow or what it brings. So if we live only for today, since that is all we know we will have… it can help us with our fears of what might happen tomorrow.

We can’t stop the traffic jams in the morning or the nasty talk on the subway but we can control how we deal with it. If we stop and relax at whatever it is that is just too big to handle; get a grip…speak to yourself in affirmation statements. Such as, “I am living in a world of chaos but I can handle this and anything that come my way because I am strong and I will deal with this in a positive way”. “I am too strong to let anything overtake me”. We cannot let anything overtake our ability to live a good life.

It has also been said that we can reduce the anxiety in life if we can laugh often, play more and not take ourselves too seriously. Life would indeed be in a more simple form.