Coping of Anxiety—Is There an Easy Way?

A lot of people think how we cope with anxiety is a leftover from our caveman days—the flight or fight response. It kept our ancestors safe from rival tribes and some very big animals. The heart increases per beat, our muscles get tense and we start to sweat—do we run or do we fight? Lucky for us these days we don’t have to worry about any large animals trying to eat us for dinner.

Our fight or flight is more likely to come from our supervisors or managers demanding an explanation why the bottom line dropped last month. As much as we would like to flight we stay but our heartbeat is up, the palms of your hands start to sweat and our blood pressure is on the rise. Leading not to the flight or fight but the toil it takes on our bodies for the anxiety we feel.

The emotional symptoms that are left over after the strips have been torn away can be mental as well as physical. Emotional symptoms will include emotional numbness and withdrawal from the world. A “I don’t care” attitude, an obsessive desire to dwell on the cause of our anxiety and sometimes we cope with anxiety by becoming dependent on drugs, alcohol and other addictions. Many people don’t realize how often we revert to caveman tactics when our anxiety gets more than we can handle.

We may not physically run away but we do mental run away and hide. Sometimes we cope with anxiety by playing endless video games, absorbing ourselves in several books, one after the other. Others develop rituals or play around with loveless sexual encounters as a coping method of dealing with our anxiety.

When anxiety becomes a problem you should seek help from a professional. What’s a problem you ask? That would depend on the individual. Mostly if your anxiety starts to interfere with day to day living or being unable to sleep at night. Being nervous about a meeting the next day isn’t an anxiety disorder. It’s just normal anxiety.

Getting to the point that you stop doing things because you need to play your video game or finish that book you started—then it becomes a problem.

Professional these days can do tests to identify the nature and severity of your anxiety disorder. Treatment may include medications, therapy or a combination of both.

We have not changed our survival instincts from the caveman days. These days its not big animals we have to get anxious about it’s our bosses, kids, technology, terrorists and our economy falling down around our ankles. But all that is nothing to be anxious about, is it?

Enjoy!