Page 20 - AreaNewsletters "July 2021" issue

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DO I HAV ANXI TY?
Or is Something Else Wrong With Me?
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A Castle Rock Anxiety Therapist helps you answer this question.
By Malia Doss, LMFT,
Authentic Connections Counseling Center
People frequently think there is something wrong with them physically (heart, cancer, digestive issues, etc.) and seek medical care only to hear that there is “nothing wrong with them.” When you understand the physical symptoms of anxiety, it makes total sense why people suspect various physical ailments.
When your nervous system perceives a threat, your survival mechanism commonly referred to as “Fight or Flight” goes o . As the body mobilizes to ght or run
the following things can
occur: digestive system
shuts off (which can
feel like sickness in the
stomach or a sense of
wanting to vomit), mouth
ceases producing
saliva (making it hard
to swallow or a sense
of choking), energy is
mobilized from organs
and redirected to arms
and legs (which can result in shaking), heart begins beating rapidly pushing blood to arms and legs (fear of heart attack and feeling of light headedness or nausea), pupils dilate to take in more data, and you have a general sense of “I could die!”
Anxiety is not weakness and it does not mean you are crazy. It means your nervous system is responding to a perceived threat.
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July 2021 • Castle Rock “AreaNewsletters”
20
Continued...
Anxiety is not weakness and it does not mean you are crazy. It means your nervous system is responding to a perceived threat (can be internal or external) and is responding exactly how it is meant to respond with an intense, overwhelming sense of “get the heck out of here!” The problem is, there isn’t a real threat (no one has a gun to your head and you aren’t bleeding out).
Treatment is very straightforward as we address the mind, physical body, emotional body
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