Anxiety &
Stress Management

What is Anxiety?

Cognitive symptoms of anxiety include excessive worry or fear-based thoughts, racing thoughts, frozen thoughts or inability to “think straight” as well as muddled or confused thinking. Physiological symptoms of anxiety may include heart palpitations, sweating, clammy hands, tension headaches, dizziness, shortness of breath, dry mouth, chest pain, stomach aches or nausea, muscle weakness, hot and cold flashes, numbness or tingling in hands and feet. Emotionally, anxiety can result in a heightened sense of worry or overwhelm, feelings of shame and anger or feeling detached and out-of-touch with yourself or your environment.

Anxiety and stress can be experienced both acutely and chronically and may or may not have a direct trigger. It is quite possible to feel anxious without any apparent reason or direct cause for the anxiety. When anxiety is exaggerated or out of control it can negatively impact your personal, social and occupational functioning as well as your perceived sense of health and well-being.

Anxiety may present itself in many forms and types. Understanding whether the anxiety you experience is appropriate and reasonable or intense and extreme with respect to your current life situation is necessary to determine whether or not you are struggling with typical situational anxiety or an anxiety disorder. And understanding what type of anxiety you struggle with, how it impacts you across the levels of your being and learning what your anxiety is actually made of is most important when learning how to manage it.

If what you experience is reasonable or appropriate anxiety or if you struggle with chronic and extreme anxiety, you know how overwhelming and insurmountable the feelings and thoughts can feel at times. At BHAVA Therapy Group, we believe the best approach to the treatment of anxiety tends to symptoms on all three levels: cognitive, physiological and emotional. As such, we employ techniques from varying theories and philosophies including: cognitive-behavioral, experiential, somatic and mindfulness when necessary to help you find a place in which you can manage your anxiety and stress and live fully and optimally.