Recognising Your Triggers For Anxiety
It may be hard to understand how or why anxiety may be triggered. Although not the same for any two people, there are certain recognisable patterns and triggers to help deal with it when it arises. The more you know about your warning signs, the easier it is for you to manage your anxiety.
What does anxiety feel like?
There are certain feelings, thoughts and physical sensations that indicate the start of an anxiety attack. It can feel like your thoughts manifest themselves in physical feelings of malaise and the like you can't stop worrying or the very bad things you are worried about might happen.
Your body might feel:
Pins and needles
Restlessness
A tightness that leads to muscle tension, aches, and pains
Heart palpitations and irregular breathing
Sweating or hot flushes
Sleep problems
Churning in your stomach or nausea
Your mind might feel:
Tense, nervous and unable to relax
A sense of dread
Like you’re losing touch with reality (derealisation: a feeling of disconnectedness from the world around you or depersonalisation: a feeling of disconnectedness from your mind or body, almost like you are watching a character in a movie)
Low moods and depression
Ruminating about a bad experience or situation over and over again
Worrying about the future
Identifying how anxiety feels like to you can help you recognise thought patterns and triggers, which in turn help you learn how to manage them.
Common thought patterns
Crystal ball thinking
Believing you can predict the future, usually negatively, without any real evidence and approaching your prediction as if it were already a fact.
Examples: “I don’t want to go to the party because no one will talk to me.” “The last interview I went to tanked so the next one will also.”Catastrophizing
Blowing things out of proportion and assuming the worst will happen no matter how unlikely.
Examples: “My partner is on the phone after work, they must be cheating.” “My boss looked at me funnily, I’m going to lose my job.”Black and white thinking
Seeing everything in extremes with no room for middle ground. Life is usually somewhere in the middle ground. Also referred to as all-or-nothing thinking.
Examples: “I overate during lunch. I might as well continue to binge for the rest of the week since I already failed.” “My colleague is upset with me. Nobody likes me at all. I have no friends at work.”Filtering
Focusing on the negatives without seeing any of the positives going on as well.
Examples: Thinking about the one person you had an awkward interaction with at the party, rather than the three people with whom you had great conversations, or thinking about the extra slice of desert you had during dinner rather than the other times you stuck strictly to your meal plan.Mind reading
Believing you know what others are thinking without any evidence.
Examples: “I know they are talking about me right now. They are thinking about how weird I look.” “Everyone is wondering what I’m doing at this party.”
The idea is to notice when your mind starts to fall into one of these patterns of thinking. Once you can label the pattern, you are more able to recognise that these are simply thoughts that will pass.
Other ways to spot patterns
Something else that may be helpful when becoming familiar with your patterns of anxiety is to think about rating your anxiety levels when you start to experience it on a scale of 1-10. This can help you quantify your anxiety and again start to understand how to manage your anxiety better.
The scale is as follows:
1-2 would be low-level anxiety — feelings of anticipation, impatience, low-level stress.
3-6 would be moderate anxiety — you may be unable to relax and may experience intrusive or irrational thoughts.
7-9 would be high anxiety — feelings of dread, heart palpitations, dizziness, or going into panic mode.
10 is a panic attack — this is often physical symptoms like hyperventilating accompanied by feelings of impending doom.
Next time you are feeling anxious, think where you would appear on that scale. Try to keep notes in a notebook or on your phone, alongside the time and date and perhaps what you feel has caused it if you’re aware of what that is.
Sometimes anxiety can feel like it comes out of nowhere, but there are always triggers that cause you to feel anxious more often than not. It could be certain social situations or meetings at work. It could be an overwhelming workload or going somewhere new. Your triggers are unique to you and different for each person, but identifying them can help you ease, and manage, your anxiety.
