7 symptoms of anxiety

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) lists ten different anxiety disorders, each one slightly different and specific, such as social anxiety and panic disorder. But behind the categories, anxiety itself is your body’s attempt to protect you. 

Your brain does not differentiate between a real threat and a perceived one; your body triggers the same survival response either way. In the world we evolved for, this response kept us alive. In the modern world, it can get stuck switched on, leaving you with the symptoms we now call generalised anxiety disorder.

Anxiety symptoms

The DSM lists the required symptoms to receive a formal diagnosis of generalised anxiety disorder (GAD). One of the most widely used ways to measure anxiety is the GAD-7 scale, developed in 2006 by Spritzer et al. It takes the symptoms listed in the DSM and puts them into seven simple questions. Your answers give a score that indicates whether the anxiety you feel is mild, moderate, or severe. But it’s important to remember that these tools only capture the outward signs, such as restlessness, fatigue, irritability, and poor sleep. They don’t explain why your nervous system is behaving as if your life is under threat. That part comes down to the way your brain and body evolved, and how modern life keeps the alarm system switched on.

How do you know if you have anxiety?

Many people reach this point when they begin to question whether what they feel - and may have felt for many years, if not a lifetime - is normal. Personally, I do not like the word normal. There is no normal. Every being exhibits different behaviours, experiences different feelings, and likes or dislikes different things. Believing in a norm can create more problems, because it places an expectation on you to cope when you assume your experience is something you should be able to manage.

If your feelings - emotional or physical - prevent you from living your best life, but you cannot quite find the cause, anxiety is most definitely a consideration. Anxiety is your brain trying to keep you alive. The body reacts the same whether the danger is real or imagined. It is a survival mechanism, and your brain does not differentiate between a threat to your ego and a threat to your life.

Everyone experiences anxiety differently. There are further physical symptoms of generalised anxiety not listed in the DSM or covered in the GAD-7 questionnaire. These symptoms are more typical and covered in some of the other anxiety disorders, such as panic disorder; however, my experience through speaking about experiences of anxiety with many people is that they are prevalent in GAD too. Your heart may pound out of your chest like someone else’s, but you shiver and they flush.

Physical symptoms of anxiety

At times, you might find yourself with any of the following physical symptoms:

• shaking
• digestive/stomach problems
• dizziness
• tiredness
• a noticeably strong, fast or irregular heartbeat (palpitations)
• aching
• dry mouth
• unusual sweating
• breathing difficulties
• headache
• pins and needles

Working with a hypnotherapist for anxiety

When you recognise that what you have been contemplating for a while is probably true, and you have symptoms of anxiety, hypnotherapy can help you work with your nervous system rather than against it. The human brain does not differentiate between real and imaginary threats. This means your body reacts as if danger is present, even when it isn’t.

Through hypnotherapy, you begin to understand how your amygdala senses a threat and instructs your brain to release adrenaline, and why this leaves your body in a state of hyper-alert. You will learn tools to regulate this response, techniques that bring your body back to the present moment and remind your system that it is safe.

By practising these methods, you retrain your brain away from the constant “alarm” and into calmer patterns of thought and feeling. As you discover, you are not your anxiety, just the one noticing it.  This shift allows anxious feelings to ease, and in some circumstances, to disappear altogether.

References

• A brief measure for assessing generalized anxiety disorder: The GAD-7 | Anxiety disorders | JAMA Internal Medicine | JAMA Network
• GAD-7 Anxiety test questionnaire | Patient