[THREAD] In the last thread, we discussed what depression makes us do. Let's do the same for anxiety. It is important to recognize the signs and start with a few coping mechanisms. Anxiety, generally speaking, is simply the fight-or-flight response that activates too often.

Our fight-or-flight response allowed us to survive, to escape or fight in dangerous situations. However, there are times when this system activates because of small issues or non existent danger. When it does so too often, that is when anxiety is diagnosed.

Anxiety has physical and psychological symptoms. In the physical symptoms, the most common ones are fast heart rate, shortness of breath, sweating, tensing of muscles, tunnelling of vision and even as far as derealization and depersonalization in extreme situations.

These physical symptoms play a function. In a truly dangerous situation, they allow us to run faster or fight harder. The psychological symptoms would be racing thoughts, intrusive thoughts, obsessive thoughts that repeat themselves. Anxiety can be inherited at times.

A stressful environment, repeated stress overtime and a lack of externalizing and self-care over the long-term can also contribute to our anxiety. It is important to realize a few things about anxiety. First of all, it has a peak and goes back down automatically.

This is because the adrenaline rush and those symptoms take up a lot of resources and cannot be sustained for too long. The body has to rest first before the next anxiety attack. There are certain things that we can do to lessen the impact a little bit.

Deep breathing, for example, at the onset of the anxiety attack can help lower the heart rate, lowering the strength of the anxiety attack. Realizing that those anxiety attacks cannot hurt us, that our fears cannot come true because we think them can help as well.

While anxiety is scary and the symptoms can be overwhelming, it is pretty harmless. Self-care and reducing our stressors help as well. It allows our minds to rest and not push ourselves beyond our limits. Anxiety is highly treatable whether it is through meds, therapy or both.

If you are struggling with anxiety, please know that there are many solutions for treatment and you deserve to see a professional to help you get through that. If therapy is too expensive where you live, meds, in general are pretty cheap because of generic versions, and safe.