4 SIGNS OF ANXIETY YOU SHOULDN’T IGNORE // Anxiety symptoms you should pay attention to

Just a disclaimer. There are no signs or symptoms of anything that you should ignore. But there are definitely signs of anxiety or symptoms of anxiety that people experience that I've seen over the years that we tend to ignore or stuff away or not address, because we either don't think they're a big deal, we don't realize their anxiety or whatever the reason might be. So there's never a sign or symptom that you should ignore, but there are definitely things that I want to talk about today that you shouldn't ignore. One of the first signs of anxiety that you shouldn't ignore that I want to address is an immediate or rapid panicky feeling. What I've seen over the years is that people will get really scared. They might even take themselves to the ER or have a friend or a family member take them because they feel like they're having a heart attack or they feel like they're dying. And what happens if they go to the doctor or the hospital? They. They tend to tell them there's nothing physically wrong with you, you're okay, maybe you should talk to somebody. And what I see is that then they go home, they're feeling better, they're feeling calmer, Maybe the er, the hospital gives them a medication to calm the system, then they feel better, and they don't address what actually happened and that it might happen again. And over time, after several incidences of this, they're like, maybe I should get some help with this. So it's not that people are ignoring this panicky, scary feeling in the moment. They're very aware of it, but they don't then address it when they're told that something might not be physically wrong with them. So a big physical sign of anxiety that you should never ignore is a rapid panicky feeling, and it might lead to a faster heart rate, sweating, palms are sweating, you get red, you get flush. There's physical symptoms that we're aware of that we're not ignoring, but we tend to ignore the underlying cause of it because then the physical symptoms go away. We say, oh, I feel better, I'm good now. And we ignore. Ignore what actually happened. So, please, if you're ever feeling immediately panicky or these attacks are starting to come more frequently, or the ER doctor, if you go there and they say there's nothing physically wrong, maybe you should talk to somebody. Maybe you should talk to somebody. Panicky feelings are not a sign that you should be ignoring long term. A second sign of anxiety that you shouldn't ignore is any thoughts that seem to just stick, stick around in your head. And I've said this before in other videos, if you're ever thinking about something more than you wish you were thinking about, ask for help. Talk to somebody. But those thoughts that tend to stick around and don't go away, they're there for a reason. It's your mind trying to tell you, hey, something might be off here. Maybe this is something that we should address. A certain level of worry and anticipation in life is totally common. We all experience those feelings throughout our lives, depending on what's going on or what situations or scenarios we're in. But those thoughts that keep you up at night, that you've been thinking about for weeks or months or years, or anything that's just sticking around and overstaying its welcome, maybe it's time to talk to somebody and not be something that you should just be stuffing away or trying to wait out or get it to pass or not address it. Thoughts that don't seem to be resolving themselves over a few days, weeks, months, years, however long it's bothering you, is definitely a sign sign that you shouldn't be ignoring a third big sign of anxiety that you shouldn't ignore. And not everybody with anxiety experiences this, but a lot of times it's not attributed to anxiety. So proper care and diagnosis is obviously important and very crucial in this process. But sometimes there is a sense of losing touch with reality. Because there's so much going on mentally in an anxious person's mind, they might start lose touch with what's really going on around them. They're constantly worrying. Maybe they're experiencing a bunch of panic attacks and they're starting to have a lot of false beliefs which can lead to delusions, which are thoughts and experiences and beliefs that aren't real. Don't want to go too far into it, but if you just feel like you're losing touch with reality, or there's things going on in your family or with your friends that you're no longer part of, or you just feel really emotionally checked out doesn't have to be losing touch with reality in the terms of having delusions or hallucinations, but you're just feeling really checked out for more than a day. We all need those few moments or days to just check out and do whatever. But if this is going on and you're feeling really checked out from life, or life is starting to pass you by, or work is happening, and all of a sudden at the end of the week or the end of the month and you're Like I don't even know what happened. Maybe it's not even anxiety, but it's definitely a sign that shouldn't be ignored. And the last thing that I really want to address is avoidance. When we feel uncomfortable, we start to feel anxious and then we try to avoid that anxious feeling because it's so uncomfortable and we don't like it. Nobody wants to feel this heightened sense of anxiety. So we start to avoid people, places, scenarios, situations, work events, life events, social events, whatever the case may be. But because the discomfort is leading to anxiety, which is translating to avoidance, that's not what we want. So if you're finding yourself starting to avoid certain people or areas in your life, it's probably a sign that there might be something else going on or something that's bothering you that you might not be addressing. What happens is that short term avoidance leads to long term avoidance, which can worsen because over time it becomes a habit and we start to just avoid out of habit instead of addressing what's really going on or saying, hey, this person or this scenario or these events, I'm starting to feel really anxious and we just want to avoid the discomfort altogether. So the avoidance starts to become a habit. So if you're just trying to avoid somebody because they annoyed you, that's one thing. But if avoidance is starting to become a thing in your life that you do, or it's becoming habitual, definitely may be a sign of anxiety that you shouldn't be ignoring and that you might want to address with a therapist or a professional. I just want to reiterate, there are no signs or symptoms of anything that we should ignore. But those are just four signs of anxiety that people tend to muscle out, or they address in the moment, but they don't address the root cause, or they don't address longer term. And then over time it gets worse for that person and then they're really in a tough spot. So you shouldn't ever ignore anything. But those things that we talked about here, that immediate panicky feeling, thoughts in your head that just won't go away, feeling like you're checked out or losing touch with reality and starting to be really avoidant of things in your life, can be big signs that we tend to try to white knuckle through and then they get better in the short term, but in the long term they're causing more damage. Always err on the of caution. If something is bothering you, ask for help, seek professional guidance, get an opinion. Don't let any of these signs and symptoms of anxiety just fall to the wayside or you ignore them because they seem to get better. If these things are happening and maybe they've happened once and you just want to get it checked out or you're saying, huh, I've been to the ER a couple times now and nothing's ever physically wrong and this happens. I've had this happen to clients and they come to me and they've been to the ER five or six times and they're realizing there's something else that might need to be addressed here. These things happen. So if you're finding yourself stuffing down or ignoring any of those four things, maybe it's time to get an opinion, ask for some help, reach out, do some research. But don't ever ignore something just because you felt better the next day because there's no guarantee that it won't come back and there's no guarantee that that sign or symptom isn't the cause of something else going on.