Anxiety is a common mental health condition in the UK. In fact, according to The Mental Health Foundation, 60% of UK adults experienced anxiety that interfered with their daily lives in the past two weeks.
While it is very common, anxiety can often feel unexplainable. As the common symptoms including a racing heartbeat, sweating, dizziness, and a general feeling of doom set in, it can be difficult to identify exactly where the anxiety episode originated, which can lead to thought spirals and worsened anxiety.
However, understanding what your body is experiencing at that moment can be helpful in coming down from the intense symptoms.
What happens to your body during an unexplained anxiety episode?
According to Ellen Vora MD, author of The Anatomy of Anxiety, when you’re experiencing unexplainable anxiety, you could actually be experiencing what she has coined a “false anxiety.”
She explained: “False anxiety is avoidable anxiety. True anxiety, on the other hand, is purposeful anxiety.
“False anxiety occurs when a stress response is precipitated by a seemingly benign aspect of modern life, like a blood sugar crash or strong coffee. At these times, our minds are all too happy to swoop in with an explanation.”
Vora believes that at that moment, we need to focus on what’s happening in our bodies, not our minds, in order to tackle it.
Vora explained: “Sleep deprivation, chronic inflammation from eating foods you don’t tolerate, and the comment section in Twitter—these are all, from your body’s perspective, indications that your environment is not safe.”
Which means that your body enters into a fight-or-flight mode — a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event.
So, what should you do in this moment?
Well, as difficult as it can be to ground yourself there and then, identifying what’s happening in your life at that moment, what you have eaten, what you have taken in subconsciously as you’ve scrolled on your phone, could hold exactly the answer you’re looking for.
As Vora said: “Instead of asking, ‘How can I stop feeling so anxious?’, we should be asking, ‘What is my anxiety telling me?’”