Mental health awareness week (MHAW)- Anxiety✨

Do we still have a caveman brain?🧠

This years MHAW is focusing on anxiety and panic attacks, one of the most common mental disorders in the UK. A lot of charities/influencers are raising awareness of anxiety and showing ways we can overcome it, but I wanted to strip right back to basics and explain…why do we have anxiety?

The way I explain anxiety is that our brain is still stuck in caveman times. Back then we had a mechanism used to protect us from lions/danger, this was known as our “Fight or flight response”, this was very useful back then and helped us to escape from dangerous situations.

Our fight or flight response can lead to lots of physical symptoms like an increase in heart rate, sweating, trembling, chest pains and the urge to avoid anything with may cause further anxiety.

As you may see, this was very useful when running away from a lion. But what about when you are holding a meeting, or paying for your weekly grocery shop?

Anxiety disorder leads to unprovoked anxiety and a false activation of our fight or flight response, which can be a very scary experience.

We have evolved but our brains haven’t. We must learn strategies to control this unprovoked anxiety and teach it that it isn’t needed anymore.

To anyone struggling with anxiety right now, remember you are the controller, not your anxiety. You are not dying, your brain is just a little behind.🥰Never stop living your life, take anxiety for the ride and eventually it realises it isn’t welcome.✨✨