What is Anxiety: Your Guide to Recognizing the Symptoms of Anxiety

You may be wondering if the stress and worry that you sometimes feel is anxiety. Anxiety can be experienced in different ways for each person, however there are some main commonalities to the symptoms of anxiety.

Anxiety symptoms can be separated into two different categories; physical symptoms and cognitive/emotional symptoms. Let’s start with the physical symptoms. When the body is experiencing anxiety there can be an increased heart rate, shortened and shallow breathing, shaking or difficulty sitting still, stomachache, dizziness, and sweating. You may have one or all of these physical symptoms when experiencing anxiety.

There are also cognitive and emotional symptoms you may experience during anxiety. “Cognitive” refers to your thoughts, and common thoughts during anxiety include excessive worry or thinking bad things are going to happen. Sometimes with anxiety you may have a specific fear, such as “I’m worried that I won’t be safe while I travel for work next week,” but sometimes you may just have a general fear of “something bad is going to happen.” Lastly, the emotional symptoms are your feelings. During anxiety these feelings can range from feelings of fear and worry to sadness.

Anxiety symptoms can be experienced as intermittent, every so often, or chronic, such as daily. Anxiety symptoms can also range from mild to severe. Whether you are experiencing anxiety often or infrequently, mildly or severely, it can be debilitating to get through the day with anxiety.

The good news is that anxiety is very treatable through talk therapy, EMDR, and Neurofeedback. Our caring therapists are here to meet with you and help you address any concerns you have with anxiety.