Anxiety is an emotional state characterized by intense fears, worries, and nervousness. It can be triggered by a certain problem that you’re not anticipating or you just don’t feel comfortable with the situation that you’re in.
Some experts believe that anxiety is a result of stress. Stress is a natural human response that we feel in our bodies when we recognize any possible threat. Your hypothalamus, which is a small region of your brain, will send an alert to your body of the stressor encountered, allowing your body to release a rush of hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. Cortisol is mainly known as the primary stress hormone that’s mostly being released to trigger stress. Along with this, adrenaline increases your heart circulation and breathing, boosting your energy.
The good news is that anxiety can be managed by dealing with the cause of concern, which is the fear or worry. There are many different ways to treat any anxiety attacks, as discussed from Apibhs.com, which includes meditation, short- and long-term medications, and therapy. However, if the anxiety persists extensively, the person should seek professional help. It could be an early sign of an anxiety disorder and needs to be treated right away.
Below are the factors that can trigger an anxiety attack and how to identify them:
Caffeine
Some people just cannot start their day without their rightful cup of coffee. While they might taste heavenly and amazing, it cannot be beneficial for you, especially if your anxieties are triggered after drinking a cup of coffee.
Caffeine is known to increase your alertness and releases a good amount of adrenaline to help you increase energy. While that may be beneficial, it could also trigger anxiety when taken in high dosages, resulting in caffeine-induced anxiety.
If you notice that your morning cup of coffee is enjoyable but is followed by anxiety, it’s wise to skip your morning coffee or switch to decaf.
Stress
As we all experience stress, people handle it differently. It could be any daily stressors in life that we go through, such as traffic jams or missing newspaper pages. On the other hand, some people go through much heavier stress such as divorce, death of a spouse or a family member, illness, and sudden life change. With this, if a person constantly experiences stress, there’s a huge chance that they’ll be prone to experiencing anxiety in their lives.
Stress can also lead to behaviors like not sleeping well, skipping meals, or avoiding social interactions, which may worsen your anxiety.
If you’re often anxious when you feel stressed, you should learn to try practicing coping mechanisms like lowering your expectations, allow others to help you, maintaining emotional composure, and practice stress management. Along with this, you could also keep in touch with a therapist or counselor to further help you handle your stress.
Health Issues
Finding out that you’re suffering from an illness that could affect how you’ll continue your life can be upsetting and may also be a cause of anxiety. This is one of the most powerful triggers as it’s immediately absorbed by your body, making you anxious the moment you hear about your situation.
What you can do is to encourage yourself that you can get through this. Surround yourself with supportive people to help you get better. To further help you out, you could try to join support groups or you could see a therapist.
In addition to that, you should also engage with your doctor on the treatments and procedures to be done for your speedy recovery.
Negative Thinking
How you speak to yourself can reflect on how you see yourself. When you speak negatively of yourself, it could trigger anxiety as you’d convince yourself that you’re that negative thought. Instead, don’t let your thoughts control you, but you should be in control of them; while you might be feeling down, never speak negatively of yourself because the only person who can raise yourself is you.
If you frequently use negative words to yourself, you could try to refocus your thoughts and try to look for the brighter side of things. Say, for example, you got yelled at by your boss because of the way you work. While it’s extremely easy to get negative about it, turn it around by taking it as advice on how you can improve the way you work. This way, you’ll learn to be better and be able to improve yourself.
If this is too difficult for you, seeing a therapist would be a great idea to help you see things in a positive light.
Medications
If these occur, you should consult with your doctor for other alternatives since those medicines may regularly trigger one’s anxiety.
Conflict
Being in conflict with someone you know or a stranger down the street may cause anxiety. Also, there’s a greater chance of acquiring anxiety if you’re in conflict with someone very special to you or your conflict greatly affects your life.
It could be a conflict with your partner with how you’re planning to raise your kids, where your family’s going to settle, in-law problems, or budgeting. When you’re in an uncomfortable situation that usually heightens your anger, you could experience anxiety.
You may need to learn conflict resolution strategies such as keeping both parties calm, understand, and listen to one another, and compromise that’ll benefit both parties. If this solution cannot help or has minimal effect on your anxiety, see a relationship therapist to guide you.
Financial Concerns
Having to worry about your financial status can trigger your anxiety, especially if you want to be prepared for any event that may occur. It could be that you’re drowning in debt, unexpected bills sent to your homes, or you have difficulty saving money due to all house expenses while you have a minimum wage.
As humans, we want to be financially stable to live a comfortable life and not have to be stressed about how we’ll survive each passing day. You may want to get out of the cycle of living from one paycheck to another and not have to worry about money.
With that, you might be stressing yourself too much about how you can get out of the loop. What you could do is take a deep breath and surround yourself with positive thoughts on how you can get through this. If possible, you could look for a side job that you can do to earn a little extra, look for a better paying day job, or start to build your own business along the way. You could also do tight budgeting with your family to help save more and reduce unimportant expenses.
With this, you’ll be financially responsible and be able to save a little extra for emergency purposes.
Social Events
Not everyone is a social butterfly who likes to party and talk to strangers. If you ever caught yourself in the middle of a room full of strangers, your anxiety might kick in. While it’s not ideal to have an anxiety attack with people you don’t know, there’s something you could do about it.
If you’re anticipating a social event that you need to go to, like your best friend’s wedding, and you don’t know anyone else at a party, you could always tag your friend along with you so you wouldn’t have to be alone.
As you grow older, you need to handle this kind of situation by yourself. As a tip, seek a professional to guide you with the correct coping mechanisms to help you get through these kinds of situations. This will allow you to be independent and avoid any social anxiety disorder.
Skipping Meals
Whether you’re on a diet or you’re too busy to eat, skipping meals can make your blood sugar drop, leading to a rumbling tummy and jittery hands. When these effects happen, it can lead to anxiety.
You must try to eat a balanced meal as much as possible. However, if you’re unable to do so, you could try to push in a healthy snack to keep you fueled up. If you’re expecting a busy day ahead, you could pack a lunch so that you could still eat even while you’re working.
Not only will this help lessen your anxiety attacks but eating balanced meals helps you stay healthy and focus, which is beneficial for you.
Conclusion
Even though anxiety may be experienced by almost everyone, it must be controlled as much as possible since frequent anxiety attacks can lead to an anxiety disorder that requires professional help.
When you’re having anxieties, take a step back and retrace your steps to identify what causes your anxiety attacks. Make a list of everything that you do and how you’re feeling to identify any common factors that lead you into having an anxiety attack. With that, you could use your gathered results to try to stay away from it, learn coping mechanisms, or seek professional help for further assistance.
