Written by Brooke
What is Mental Health Awareness Week?
MHAW occurs every year bringing together the UK to take time to focus on our mental health and the mental health of those around us. With the awareness week starting in 2001, it has only gained momentum in bringing awareness to this still stigmatised topic. The week also allows us to look at how mental health is still stigmatised and how to increase access to mental health support in order to intervene before our mental health deteriorates.
MHAW targets increasing the public’s understanding of mental health by introducing different themes each year which can impact a person’s mental health. The past three years themes are: Loneliness, Kindness and Connecting with Nature but this years’ theme is:
What is anxiety?
Anxiety can be defined very simply as ‘The state of feeling nervous or worried that something bad is going to happen’ – Oxford Dictionary. But when we add our own experiences to the definition of anxiety it can altered and changed in multiple ways. Some people add to the definition of anxiety symptoms they experience, situations where they have felt anxious and their behaviours as a result of anxiety. These can look like ‘Anxiety is a normal and often healthy emotion that we experience as human beings. It prepares our body to help fight danger and in moderate amounts anxiety can help us perform better in tasks. However, anxiety starts interfering with our daily lives due to intensity and frequency, this is when it can be classified as a medical disorder.’ – American Psychological Association.
Anxiety falls under the emotion category of fear. When we start to become anxious it is usually due to a fear of something, these maybe generalised or specific, for example people or lifts. This can sometimes be named as a stressor, trigger or fear.
Anxiety can present in many different ways, four aspects that we like to look at include thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations and behaviour. When assessing each of these elements we can understand our anxiety and how it affects us clearly. See below a few ways in which our anxiety can present.
How is our anxiety maintained?
Anxiety can return and is maintained through four main behaviours including:
- Avoidance and safety behaviours
- Frightening thoughts
- A focus on the fear
- Negative judgements about the fear
All of these lead to negative assumptions about the thing we are fearful of, and therefore, we tend to avoid them more as we assume the worse each time we see, hear or come in to contact with the feared thing. This tends to lead to a more intense discomfort the next time we come into contact with it. Therefore, making us want to avoid the triggers even more!
What can we do to better manage our anxiety?
There are many different ways in which people can better manage their anxiety. This could be through the use of applying self-help techniques, relaxation or gradual exposure. Take a look at what our team does to better manage their anxieties.
Workshops
Throughout MHAW 2023 we hosted four ‘Understanding Anxiety’ workshops throughout Leicester. We went to community venues including Drop-in and Community centres to reach out to communities close by. These workshops included:
- Definition of Anxiety
- Symptoms of Anxiety
- Fight or Flight System
- What maintains anxiety
- Tools and Techniques:
- Deep Breathing
- Progressive Muscle Relaxation
- Grounding
Information and support for anxiety
