Anxiety has changed its meaning throughout the history of mankind in a severe way. First, anxiety was a tool to help you, to warn against dangerous situations. For example, if you were to come eye to eye with a dangerous animal or an attacker, you would have to dodge them. Anxiety prepares the body to either flee faster, or fight back better, thanks to the chemical reaction which our body puts into motion as a consequence of an anxiety signal in the brain. Nowadays, anxiety is something different entirely. People with an anxiety disorder namely hardly ever are in tough with real life threatening situations anymore. Other situations have taken over the status of 'life threatening' here, in order to cause an anxiety signal in the brain. What these situations entail can differ a lot from person to person. In many cases it has to do with a personal trauma or learned anxiety, which makes it so that you experience an anxiety response to those certain situations.

Anxiety symptoms? The progress of an anxiety disorder?

While an anxiety disorder can grow enormous in size, it can still sneak into your life. it does not always need to be a severe situation that later can cause anxiety. The most common physical symptoms of anxiety are sweaty hands, bodily tremors, a sped-up heartrate, narrowed pupils and muscle tension. These can then also be paired with one or more psychological symptoms, which include a nervous feeling, depersonalization (the feeling that your body and mind are separate, that you are looking as an outsider to what is happening to you as it were) and derealization (the feeling that you are being extracted from reality). These symptoms can differ in intensity from person to person and from time to time. Oftentimes, people experience an amplification tendency, which means that the anxiety is more and more present in the life of that person, and after a time this will even lead a fear of fear to be established. This fear of fear means that you feel anxious about experiencing anxiety symptoms, since they are experienced to have a severe effect on you. Because of this fear of fear, however, chances are increased that you will experience these symptoms again, which in a way creates a vicious cycle.

Anxiety symptoms? How to treat anxiety symptoms?

15 Minutes 4 Me is an online self-help program, which guides you on a daily basis from home in treating anxiety and its symptoms. On a daily basis, you will receive several helpful tips athome about how you can reduce your anxiety and, more importantly, how to make sure that anxiety has less of a chance in the future to manifest itself. At the hand of cognitive behavioral therapy and solution focused techniques, you will learn to reduce your anxiety on a daily basis, so that you once again are in control of your life.

Anxiety symptoms? Take the anxiety test!

Would you like to know to what extent anxiety and eventual accompanying symptoms affect your daily life? Then take the free anxiety test here!