What causes anxiety?

What causes anxiety?

There may be many reasons why someone becomes anxious.
l Some people may have an anxious personality and have learned to worry.
l Others may have a series of stressful life events to cope with, for example bereavements, redundancy, divorce.
l Others may be under pressure, at work, or home, for example, because of family problems or bills.


Feel bodily symptoms

Heart pounding,

breathing speeds up

What keeps anxiety going?

Sometimes anxiety can go on and on, and become a life long problem.
There can be a number of reasons for this:
1. If someone has an anxious personality and is a worrier, then they will probably be in the habit of feeling anxious.

2. Sometimes people have ongoing stresses over a number of years which means they develop the habit of being anxious.

3. Vicious circle of anxiety - as the bodily symptoms of anxiety can be frightening, unusual and unpleasant, people often react by thinking that there is something physically wrong, or that something truly awful is going to happen. This in itself causes more symptoms, and so a vicious
circle develops.

4. “Fear of Fear” - Someone who has experienced anxiety in a certain situation may start to predict feeling anxious, and become frightened of the symptoms themselves, this in turn actually causes the very symptoms that are feared.

5. Avoidance - once a vicious circle has developed with lots of anxious thoughts increasing the anxiety symptoms, avoidance is often used as a way of coping. It is natural to avoid something that is dangerous, but the sorts of things that people tend to avoid when they suffer from anxiety are most often not real dangers but busy shops, buses, crowded places, eating out, talking to people etc. Not only are these things not dangerous, but they are quite necessary. Avoiding them
can make life very inconvenient and difficult. This sort of avoidance can also result in a great loss of confidence which can affect how good you feel about yourself, which in turn makes you feel more anxious - another vicious circle!