Introduction to Anxiety | Addiction and Mental Health Recovery Counseling Activities

Hey there everybody, and welcome back to the addiction and co occurring disorders treatment manual. This is unit one, part five, an introduction to anxiety. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. Although most of us don't need to be introduced to anxiety, in this part we're going to define what anxiety disorders are and explore how they may interact with your other mental health, physical health or addiction issues. So unlike some other disorders, there's not a whole lot of symptoms that somebody needs to qualify as having anxiety. However, people with anxiety disorders generally feel restless or keyed up or on edge. Most of the time. They have difficulty sitting still, their mind may be racing, they're often easily fatigued. Well, when you have difficulty sitting still and your mind's racing, that's exhausting. So it makes sense that you're easily fatigued, they have difficulty concentrating, or their mind may go blank. Well, when you're anxious, your HPA axis or your threat response system is activated. When that is activated, especially when it's super activated, it makes it really difficult to focus. Your brain is in fight or flee mode, not focus on the PowerPoint mode. So it makes sense that you'll have difficulty concentrating when you're worried about something. When you have anxiety about something, those ruminations or unwanted thoughts are sort of screaming in your head. So it's hard to focus on what's in front of you because all of those anxious thoughts are so loud in your inside your head. Irritability is another symptom of anxiety. Anxiety is the flee part of the fight or flee reaction. Anxiety is part of your stress response or your threat response when you're feeling unsafe, when you're feeling threatened or you think that there might be a threat threat in the future, you're worried about something, then that threat response is activated, you're primed, you're ready to to defend yourself. Well, unfortunately that can come come out as irritability. When you're anxious pe you often respond with irritability or anger to people, things, events that normally wouldn't trigger you. But because you were already primed, because you already felt vulnerable, you responded more and more irritably to those things. And people with anxiety often experience a lot of muscle tension when you are primed to fight or flee, when you're anxious. When you're primed for responding to a threat, you keep your muscles tense. Think about athletes, you know, they don't stand on the goal line, they don't do whatever they're doing and just stand flat footed. They're typically bouncing on their Toes, they're ready, they're primed to go. And having those muscles tense and ready to spring into action is part of the stress response. People with anxiety feel that way all the time, so their muscles are tense and ready to spring into action all the time, which is what we call muscle tension. And sleeping or eating disturbance. People with anxiety, because that stress response is activated, because they don't feel safe, because they're worried about impending threats, have difficulty relaxing enough to get good quality sleep. So although they get fatigued easily and they're exhausted, they're unable or frequently unable to relax enough to get good quality sleep. So they may either not sleep at all, they've got insomnia, they may wake up throughout the night, or they may sleep, but it's not quality sleep. So they wake up and they find themselves napping a lot because they're just not getting rested. And eating disturbances are also common because high sugar, high fat foods trigger dopamine and endorphins, which can be calming to people who are feeling anxious. So we may see some food addiction as a response to that particular anxiety symptom. Just like the other parts that we talked about. I want you to think about how each symptom of anxiety could trigger addictive behavior, how each symptom of anxiety could trigger depression, anger, guilt, grief, and jealousy. Remember, depression is a feeling people have when they're out of gas, when they feel hopeless and helpless. Well, when you're anxious a lot or constantly, at a certain point you may start feeling like you're out of gas and hopeless and hopeless. When you have anxiety a lot, again, you may not be acting the way you think you should act. You may not be able to attend to things the way you think you should, which can trigger guilt. And if you miss things that like going to your kids recitals or something because your anxiety was too high, then you may feel grief about letting people down. And you may be jealous of people who aren't anxious. Or jealousy is anger at people for having something that you want. Your anxiety, especially abandonment anxiety, can trigger a whole world of jealousy in people. So get curious. List each thing, addictive behavior, depression, anger, guilt, grief, and jealousy on different sheets of paper or on different lines on the same sheet of paper. And think about how each symptom of anxiety might trigger that feeling or behavior in you. And just like in the other parts, think about three healthy ways that you can address each symptom in order to prevent it from getting worse or prevent relapse.