Anxiety is a condition that affects millions of people around the world.

In Spain, Anxiety Disorder is a mental health problem affecting 6.7 % of the population (8.8% in women, 4.5 % in men).

If isolated signs or symptoms of anxiety are included, the figure reaches 10.4% of the population.

Among the most common anxiety disorders are: Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Specific Phobias; in particular Social Phobia, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Panic Disorders.

In addition, many people live with anxiety symptoms without suffering from any of the aforementioned disorders.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STRESS AND ANXIETY?

To answer this question, it is useful to start by talking about the stress response.

THE STRESS RESPONSE:

Stress is a emotional and physiological response in the face of the emergence of a threatening stimulus or situationis everything that our body "activates" when it detects a threat.

Seen in this light, stress, far from being our enemy, is one of the most important better survival strategies of living beings, and of course of people.

The stress response can be adaptiveThe aim is to enable people to face challenges and to solve and combat challenges and threats that arise in everyday life: a demanding day at work, a race of several kilometres, a dangerous situation...

The stress response is visible in our mind and bodyat all levels.

The functioning of our body activates the survival modeour sympathetic nervous system and allows us to "optimise" our response to the environment as much as possible.

Our head is focused on the threat: How can I solve this problem, what are my options, and is this the right option?

We cannot think of anything else: this problem must be solved.

And our body responds physically to this state of activation: we pump blood faster, so that our muscles and organs are ready to cope with what lies ahead, it is important for us to deregulates our appetiteThe deregulates our sleepI am not aware of whether I am hungry or tired, and sometimes I even become unable to perceive pain Have you ever had a broken bone and the pain has been slow to come on? Have you ever had such a demanding day at work that you missed lunchtime without feeling hungry?

Therefore, if the stress response is adaptive, once we face such a threatening situation, our body should return to calm.our baseline state.

However, when can we talk about anxiety?

THE ANXIETY RESPONSE:

We talk about anxiety when we live in a permanent state of survival and alertnesswhen we become unable to take action or make a decision about that threatening stimulus, and we fail to give the signal to our body to calm down. Or even when this state of survival and hypervigilance is almost permanently active and I am not able to know or find out what the threat or problem is that keeps me so alert.

I'm sure you've heard of it... "I can't sleep and I don't understand why", "I can't concentrate on anything", "I feel that my thoughts go too fast", "I don't understand what's wrong with me, I can't relax"....

Today we live in a stressful worldOur reality demands us to be continuously productive, we live over-stimulated (social networks, work, productivity, social relations, etc.).

We are intoxicated by stress and dissatisfaction and we have virtually no downtime between one task and the next. Almost we do not connect with our body.

Our body and mind do not have time to "repair", to "get bored" and to stop.

When I surround myself with haste, demands and worries, my body chronifies the stress response we talked about earlier.

Caring for my healthy habits becomes impossible: We sleep little and badly, in fact, many people nowadays resort to sleep-inducing medication.

We have almost no time to prepare our food, let alone eat in peace and quiet without sitting in front of the computer or on the mobile phone, "fast food" and "take-away food" reign, so we are not even giving our body "the fuel it needs" to function.

Often I don't even have time to do sport, or to be active, or when it's my time to go to the gym I'm so exhausted that the physical overexertion becomes an additional stressor.

SO WHAT DO WE WORK ON IN THERAPY?

This is the stress response that we work on in therapy, the one that is maladaptive, the one that far from helping me to face the challenges of my life, frustrates me, paralyses me and makes me profoundly unable to enjoy, switch off and be at ease.

By conducting a proper assessment of your history with anxiety, we can set goals to improve the things that make you anxious: a lack of self-esteemlack of assertivenessdifficulty in make decisionsinability to setting limits in the work or family environment, lack of self-knowledge, self-demand, belief system, perfectionismunhealthy habits, attachment styles and relationships that are not very meaningful, among other reasons that can lead us to "hit rock bottom".

The challenge for therapy is to relearning to put our bodies at the service of our health and our well-being through self-knowledgethe emotional work and the learning of adaptive resources.

More often than not, when people come to the clinic they have been trying to cope with their anxiety for several months on their own, with the resources they have or with the conviction that they are suffering from a "stress peak" that will pass on its own.

This is why we often find that the therapy process starts with very high levels of anxiety and its consequent "side effects", we often have to work on what I call "the pillarsto re-establish, as far as we can, week by week, certain healthy habits that give my body back the possibility to function, to "slow down".

In many cases we need to intervene in "anxiety attacks" and "panic attacks" if they interfere with daily life and from there to be able to work on the "why" and the "what for" of anxiety. Anxiety always has a message for us.

We will work on patient life history to understand what resources it has and what resources it lacks for the emotional management and practice of the complex events in their lives.

Almost always, during the therapeutic process it is as if we have to travel from the present to the past constantly to help us understand through our history how we got here.

This will help us to detect negative patterns that only increase our suffering in order to replace them with others that are healthier and more in line with us.

In most cases, we must restore eating and sleeping patterns that have been overwhelmed by our "anxious, worried selves" and treat the insomnia and our relationship with food. Similarly, we must be especially careful with the consumption of alcohol and other intoxicants and the excessive use of screens to "palliate" discomfort.

Last, but not least, I often find that people have stopped doing what they like to dospending time with the people they love. They do not pay much attention to their friends and family, or if they do, they fail to be present or to show how they really feel. This is in fact one of the most important areas of work as it constitutes the most important support network and connection for a healthy and fulfilling life.

Thank you for reading, I look forward to seeing you in consultation!