On average one in four people will experience anxiety at some stage in their life. During a year over two million Australians experience anxiety.
Anxiety is different from stress. Anxiety has many possible symptoms:
Increased heart rate
A tightening or weight in your heart area
A feeling of impending doom
Gut tightening or nausea (IBS can be a symptom)
Sweaty hands
Tremors
A feeling of intense fear, almost as if you might die
Fear of fear, so you may have anxiety of getting anxiety
Fast and unpleasant catostrophising thoughts
Wanting to pee
Panic attacks where you hyper-ventilate and have difficulty breathing
Insomnia and phobias are closely linked to anxiety. Most people with anxiety have difficulty with their sleeping. Their mind may race and their body won't relax.
A key to relieving anxiety in the body is using the breath. It's a simple way of tricking the nervous system. When you get anxiety you think you are unsafe and you are going to die. It's the nervous system being over-sensitised.
Try breathing in to the count of 4 holding for 2 and exhaling for 6. Do this slowly and expanding deeply into your diaphragm. Your body will calm right down.
Hypnotherapy can also help with anxiety. Taking you into a trance relaxes you and when you are in this relaxed state suggestions are made to your unconscious to bring about change.
In addition working psycho-therapeutically can also help. This involves working with the anxious you, the nervous system and past experiences that may have switched on the hyper sensitivity.
Working somatically with the body/mind connection while in a trance can really help. While in a trance and deeply relaxed, if triggered to go into an anxious state you will be able to map really easily what parts of the body respond and how to control them. People are often surprised when they do this exercise as they may have thought they held anxiety in their neck and they may find it's actually their belly that tightens, making sense of their chronically bad digestion issues.
Thoughts can also trigger anxiety so it's useful to understand what thoughts you are having at the time you become anxious. By retraining the brain you can bring about change.
There is no single pathway to relieve anxiety but I find a combination therapy for the body/mind is highly effective.