Anxiety and worry - how it affects you and your relationships

The Relationship Maze

Do you or your partner often worry about lots of things to the extent that it significantly impacts your life? Does anxiety affect your relationships? In today's episode we talk about generalised anxiety: what it is, how it manifests, what might have caused it, how different therapeutic approaches think of and address anxiety and what might be done about it.We briefly consider the impact of anxiety on your relationship system and we end the session with a breathing and visualisation exercise that you can practice to bring your anxiety down.
We all feel anxious some of the time. Anxiety is our inbuilt warning system that helps us to look out for danger and to keep as safe.
Often the threat is a perceived one rather than a real threat. We talk about anxiety in the clinical sense if the anxiety is long, enduring and significantly impacts on a person's life.
Anxiety can take many forms and can focus on a specific area of concern for example in the case of of (social) phobia or obsessive-compulsive disorder. Panic disorders are a condition where anxiety manifests in a sudden and unexpected panic attack followed by a month or more of persistent concern about another attack.
While there are many different forms and manifestations of anxiety, the clinical definition of Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) stipulates that a person has excessive and persistent worry about a number of different events and difficulty in controlling these worries. Events are often over evaluated in relation to their likely impact and the intensity of worry is out of proportion compared to the likely impact of the feared event.
Because our body tricks us into thinking that we are under threat, it starts to mobilise for running away. Therefore physical symptoms of anxiety may include the following:

• heart palpitations
• dizziness or light-headedness
• faster breathing
• sweating or hot flushes
• churning in your stomach and/or a need to go to the toilet (emptying our bladder or stomach helps us run faster!)
• feeling restless and unable to sit still
• pins and needles

Anxiety is not just felt in the body is is also is accompanied by thoughts that impact on your mind and your mood:

• thinking that the worst is going to happen to you
• feeling that the world is speeding up or slowing down
• having a sense of dread
• thinking that other people will notice your anxiety
• thinking that you cannot relax
• worrying about the anxiety itself, 'I know, I am going to be anxious' - the fear or the fear
• feeling low and depressed
• only being able to think about bad things and situations
• not being able to stop thinking about all aspects of what can do wrong

Different therapeutic approaches will work differently with anxiety.

• In psychodynamic approaches the focus will be on looking at the root causes of anxiety. Where and why does it originate? Were there earlier relationships that cause the client to feel less safe in the world?
• In Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) the focus is on understanding the link between thoughts, feelings and behaviours and learning to modify safety seeking thoughts and behaviours.
• In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) the emphasis is on learning to accept and tolerate difficult sensations, feelings and thoughts.
• In Existential Therapy you can explore anxiety within the context of more universal themes and their personal meaning for you, for example how your fear of dying may play out in your daily life without you realising.
• In Person-Centred Therapy the focus is on supporting you in your struggles through being by your side.

There are different techniques of working with anxiety. Many approaches would e