Anxiety
Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time. It’s a common reaction to stressful situations such as trying to meet new people, having to juggle multiple deadlines, and working on projects that are challenging or important to you. Some people experience it only in certain types of settings, while others feel like it affects multiple areas of their lives.
Anxiety is considered a problem when it’s so frequent or so intense that it interferes with your functioning. For example, if you avoid ever talking in class, or you delay writing all your papers until the very last minute and feel bad about yourself the whole time you’re putting them off, your anxiety may be getting the better of you.
Symptoms
Symptoms of anxiety may include a sense of intense worry or fear. Some people describe it as being “unable to turn off” their thoughts. Some have physical symptoms when they think about or get close to a source of anxiety, such as a racing pulse, breathing quickly, crying, or feeling sick to their stomach. Anxiety may be accompanied by symptoms of depression.
These symptoms may be related to traumatic situations that a person has experienced in the past, or they may simply be a pattern of reactions that have become overwhelming and uncomfortable. Sometimes anxiety is related to physical concerns, illness, or use or abuse of alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs.
Anxiety can take a number of different forms, including generalized anxiety, social anxiety, posttraumatic stress, agoraphobia and other phobias, obsessive compulsive disorder, and panic disorder.
Strategies
There are treatment options for anxiety that can be very helpful. With the brief intervention therapy model we use at UHS, many students make significant progress in learning to reduce the impact of their anxiety. Counseling providers can help you identify and challenge anxiety-producing thought patterns and learn to make behavioral changes that improve functioning. They can teach relaxation skills and other techniques that can help keep anxiety from taking over.
Some students find the combination of mental health counseling and certain medications to be especially helpful in addressing their anxiety.
When an anxiety disorder requires more long-term, ongoing, or intensive treatment than we can offer at UHS, our counseling providers can make a referral to a provider in the community.
