Anxiety Disorders: Finding the facts beneath the fear

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Anxiety is more than just an overwhelming feeling, but talking to someone and figuring out the best coping mechanisms for you is key.

According to the American Medical Association, over one third of North Americans will develop or experience anxiety attacks over the course of their lives.

With symptoms ranging from but not limited to shortness of breath, dizziness and temporary paralysis, anxiety is more than just hyperventilating in a paper bag and rocking back and forth.

Anxiety disorders lead to the inability to function in different situations due to an overpowering of feeling of panic, stress and feeling like something is not right.

There are many different triggers which can cause someone to feel this way such as someone feeling overwhelmed in a social situation, where there are too many people around them.

Christine Sansom, director of Clinical and Case Management at the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) Middlesex, said everyone gets to decide whether they have anxiety or not, but it is definitely more prevalent in youth.

“Anxiety is a true reaction to something that makes us feel unsettled,” Sansom said. “For many reasons, we’re in an era where we’re not used to feeling a little chaotic and then learning those skills to deal with it.”

Sansom said anxiety and triggers can be much more than just public speaking, but students may feel an onset of an overwhelming feeling about assignments, not being able to pay rent, or experiencing a breakup.

According to Sansom, students are also graduating years younger than in the past, which explains some of the reasons why anxiety might be present.

“Students don’t have the emotional intelligence that some of the older students have developed. Unfortunately, it’s almost like they just haven’t developed the skills to cope with disappointment, with the triggers that they may be exposed to,” Sansom said.

A Fanshawe employee, who wishes to remain anonymous, has been dealing with anxiety for close to a decade, as well as a more recent case of depression.

She said factors that led to her anxiety and depression came from stress with school along with some things in her personal life.

“Everything was just kind of piling up one on top of one another and it just became too much for me to handle on my own,” she said.

She was fortunate to have a program at her school that helped her with counselling, which helped her to get through school and manage her feelings of anxiety and any depressive episode she was going through at the time.

She recently started to take medication for her anxiety and depression and she noticed an improvement.

“It was all just acknowledging that I had a problem and then taking the steps necessary to make it better,” she said. “For me, it all comes down to accepting that I have a problem and not trying to force myself to do things when I know I shouldn’t.”

She said it’s all about accepting her limitations, with an example of perhaps staying in and having a night to herself if she is feeling a case of anxiety, rather than go out with her friends.

She said she doesn’t aggressively do things to go out of her comfort zone, but she said there are times when it’s good to have someone pull you out of your box and not isolate one’s self too much, but sometimes that space and quiet time is needed.

To help calm her down, she likes to read, watch movies, hang out with her cat and maybe with a friend one on one in a quiet and calm environment.

“Just making sure I get a chance to recharge my mental health,” she said.

She said she does have friends who are aware of her mental health state and that do help her breathe and get through an overwhelming period.

However, if she’s at work, she just tries to push through it and do her best, then after work she will head home and do some of her calming techniques.

Sometimes she gives herself some motivating advice, or she steps back and takes a walk to get fresh air and get to a functioning state of mind.

Suzanne Book, senior manager of Counselling and Accessibility Services said Fanshawe sees anxiety on a spectrum level, where some students are anxious by perhaps a test in school or not being able to sleep, but anxiety can be a positive thing.

“It can be something that fuels our motivation to get something done,” Book said.

She said your body might also give you cues that you need to get on something and get it done.

“We then have some students who actually have the symptoms that would lead to a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder,” Book said.

A little bit of anxiety is expected for post-secondary students, but it’s important to have coping mechanisms to mitigate symptoms, according to Book.

Heather Cummings, executive director of Student Success said it is normal for students to have an increase in anxiety, but agrees with Book about the spectrum of the overwhelming feeling.

“When [anxiety] starts to really impact things negatively, it’s a good time for students to check in with themselves and [question], ‘Is this typical, have I felt this before, is this new, is this more than what I’ve experienced before, or is this something I’m just concerned about and need to reach out’,” Cummings said.

Both Book and Cummings said there are different resourses available on campus and around the city, and believe that students should talk more about mental health at an early age to understand the case of anxiety and mental health as a whole.

“When you talk about it, that’s when solution based approaches can start, if people are really suffering with triggers for specific anxiety base interactions,” Sansom said.

For those experiencing anxiety disorders, London has an abundance of resources to help. Read our "Help is Just Around The Corner" article to find out exactly what they are.