Understanding stress & anxiety: How can you cvercome it?

Everyone experiences stress and anxiety at one point or another; it is simply our body’s natural reaction to a stressful event. Whether you’re going for an interview, taking an exam or heading towards a milestone event such as getting married or having a baby, we are often faced with situations that cause feelings of stress and anxiety throughout our entire lives.

What makes us different from one another is the way we react to these stressful events. They can cause us to become anxious and sometimes we can begin to overthink situations and anticipate the worst outcome – only further fuelling these feelings. Everyone has a different threshold for how much stress they can cope with but it’s important that, when it becomes excessive to the point it impacts on our everyday lives, we seek help and support. 

What are the symptoms?

Before we start looking at how to manage stress and anxiety, it is important that we recognise and understand the symptoms. Excessive worry can have a huge impact on our lives as it affects our ability to concentrate on even the simplest of tasks, either at home or work. This constant worry can leave us feeling exhausted and it can be especially hard to switch off at night, seriously affecting our ability to get to sleep. Feeling particularly irritable can be caused by a lack of sleep, but can also be a direct symptom of anxiety. In turn this heightened anxiety can cause physical effects in the form of muscle tension and tightness. This is our body’s physical reaction when we’re feeling stressed or anxious, causing the muscles in our body to tense up in a reflex-like reaction. Many of these symptoms coincide with one another and, whether you are experiencing one or all of them, it’s important to address them before you become overwhelmed.

What can you do to combat feelings of Stress & Anxiety?

Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to switch off feelings of stress and anxiety, but there are very simple and effective ways you can learn to help manage them. Some people might consider attending one-on-one therapy – but what if we don’t have the time or resources to make this happen? At Therapy for You, we believe that this should never act as an obstacle on the journey to feeling better. So, we’ve created a series of free, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy based online video treatments, to provide you with the tools and techniques to make positive changes to your thinking and help relieve some of these symptoms through problem solving. Work through the course at home or on-the-go and at your own pace.

If you feel as though our online service could work for you, why not give our therapy courses a go? Head to https://www.therapyforyou.co.uk/courses/online to see what our free NHS service can do for you.