Content
Anxiety
A student’s story
I felt anxious about starting uni, making sure I found the lecture theatres on time, coping with balancing work, exams and assignments. This anxiety was perfectly normal and I know most of the students were feeling the same way. However, when these short bursts of anxiety turned into long periods of time, life became difficult. I constantly felt uneasy and nervous. My head was extremely active with negative concerns about assignments, work, friends, and bills . . . actually about everything. I would be saying things like “I’m going to fail this assignment, I know it”. I would genuinely believe my negative thoughts as they constantly played like a broken record through my head.
My perfectionistic personality meant that I was very critical of myself and would concentrate on my failures instead of my successes. I became very frustrated when I could not excel, let alone keep on top of all aspects of my busy life. The stress of uni life had got to me. I was irritable and impatient with my friends and family. I couldn’t concentrate in class.
I started to isolate myself as social interactions made my heart race and my stomach tie up in knots. I was so tired. I was exhausted both physically and mentally. Anxiety had taken over my life. I needed help.
I went to see a counsellor at Student Services. She spent the time listening to me and understanding my personality. She helped me to start changing the way I was thinking. We looked at different psychological therapies and decided that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) worked best for me. I learnt techniques to use to control my anxiety.
I learnt about my unhelpful thoughts such as “catastrophising” (seeing things in all or nothing terms) and “fortune-telling” (being fearful of something in the future that may not even happen). My awareness of these unhelpful thought patterns helped me to be more realistic with my thinking and challenge my negative thoughts.
I learnt to reorganise my life to become more “balanced” across all aspects not just uni and work. I made myself spend time doing relaxing things like going to the beach. Exercising also really helped me to clear my head and feel positive.
I started to relax and actually breathe again. I felt alive again. I know that anxiety is still in my life but at least now with a better understanding of me and my ‘anxiety taming tools’ I know that anxiety will no longer have control over my life.
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Tips for taming anxiety
- Try breathing exercises. When we are anxious we tend to automatically start breathing shallower. This disrupts the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in our blood stream, having negative effects on the nervous system and some of our internal organs. We can then feel the physical symptoms such as light headedness, increased heart-rate, muscle tension and trembling. Breathing exercises can help keep the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels balanced and reduce these symptoms.
Take a deep breath in through your nose, feel your stomach rise and lungs fill with air, hold it and count 1, 2, 3 . . . Then breathe out and hold 1, 2, and 3 . . . Repeat at least twice. Keep practicing this technique and it will begin to feel normal. You can even use it as a protective measure; before unavoidable anxious situations.
- Reconnect with nature.
- Relax with meditation or yoga.
- Exercise releases endorphins that create positive feelings and burns off excess energy that can contribute to anxiety; and manufactures neurotransmitters that help you to think clearly, feel more emotionally stable and sleep better.
- Challenge your unhelpful thoughts. Develop rational, positive alternative statements to the automatic negaitve thoughts that foster anxiety.
- Learn to say NO to people. Try not to over–commit yourself.
- Set aside a ‘worry’ time (before you go to bed is good) where you write down all of the things that worry you and how you might go about solving these concerns. That way these worries are written down and organised. You can relax knowing that they are collected somewhere and you can deal with them in the next ‘worry’ time.
- Remember that you don’t have to be perfect all of the time. You are only human!
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Where to find help or read more
USC Counsellors, Student services, C Block (07) 5430 1226
Beyond Blue: http://www.beyondblue.org.au
Help Guide.org: http://www.helpguide.org/mental/anxiety_self_help.htm
References
The Australian Psychological Society ltd. Understanding and Managing Anxiety 2011 [cited Mar 19].
Beyond Blue 2011 [cited 2011 Mar 26]
The University of Cambridge, University Counseling Service, Anxiety and Panic 2011 [cited 2011 Mar 19].
The University of Oxford, anxiety information 2011 [cited Mar12].
Anxiety Support Centre: Your Online Resource for Anxiety Solution, lifestyle tips 2011 [cited 2011 May 12].
This article is compiled by Heidi Nash, in partnership between Student Services Health and PUB 352 Public Health Project for the USC Health & Wellbeing Project.
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