Anxiety Archives | Carrollton Christian Counseling

Avoidance Anxiety and How It Affects Relationships

Avoidance Anxiety and How It Affects Relationships

Tammy Varghese, Kate Motaung2025-05-09T07:01:47+00:00May 9th, 2025|Abandonment and Neglect, Anxiety, Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues|

There’s something about unpleasant experiences that just shouts, “Don’t do this again!”. We instinctively tend to avoid unsavory things to save ourselves time and effort and to preserve our peace of mind. For example, if you have a bad experience at an eating establishment, you’re unlikely to patronize it again. It can be scary getting into a car again after an accident or it may feel uncomfortable walking where you were mugged. We tend to avoid the unpleasant, or what reminds us of unpleasant experiences. This can be advantageous, for the reasons already mentioned. However, it can also have a downside. There are situations in which it is necessary to face unpleasant things for another, bigger purpose. You may not enjoy public speaking, for example, but it enables you to effectively communicate your ideas to more people. In key instances in life, it may be necessary to face the things that make you anxious or that you ordinarily try to avoid. Understanding avoidance anxiety and its impact on your life can help you take steps to deal with this anxiety and reclaim your freedom and ability to enter diverse situations unhindered by fear. Avoidance Anxiety Unpacked We all have moments or situations that make us anxious. Perhaps it is dinner with your family, talking or eating in public, going to a social event, a first date or job interview, driving, addressing conflict, or any number of other circumstances. When you feel anxious, your body reacts by activating your fight-flight-freeze response. This is one of the ways your body prepares you to act in ways that protect you and your well-being. Anxiety doesn’t feel pleasant. It includes signs such as a rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms, racing thoughts and restlessness, and even feelings of dread. When you’re anxious, it can feel [...]

Comments Off

Working Through Anxiety and Intrusive Thoughts

Working Through Anxiety and Intrusive Thoughts

Mccartney Paul, Kate Motaung2025-04-08T10:42:14+00:00April 8th, 2025|Anxiety, Featured, Individual Counseling|

Our bodies and minds don’t always do what we tell them to. You could be on a date, and all you’re trying to do is stay calm and not come across a certain way, but there’s no guarantee that your mind and body are going to comply with this request. It can sometimes feel like your mind is actively working against you and your well-being. That’s certainly the case with anxiety and intrusive thoughts. Most people can probably pinpoint a time when they felt anxious, or when a thought entered their mind unbidden. Such experiences can range from being mildly uncomfortable to being downright distressing. The good news is that they can be dealt with effectively, helping to restore calm and peace in your life. Anxiety and Intrusive Thoughts Anxiety is the feeling of nervousness, fear, or worry that you experience when you’re in a situation that feels unsettling, frightening, or threatening. When you feel anxious, it’s often accompanied by racing thoughts, feeling restless and irritable, and you may even have a rapid heartbeat and be unable to sleep. Anxiety may last for a few moments after you’ve been in a frightening situation, but it can also linger, pointing to an ongoing condition. Intrusive thoughts are distressing and unwanted images, thoughts, urges, or ideas that enter a person’s mind. These thoughts can be unwanted for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the thoughts go against one’s personal values. These two can feed off each other and worsen things. Some of the connections between them include the following: Intrusive thoughts fuel anxiety Having unwanted thoughts piling into your mind can be quite distressing, and because these thoughts come and go as they please, and because some of them can be shocking, it can make you more anxious. This [...]

Comments Off

4 Ways to Stop a Panic Attack

4 Ways to Stop a Panic Attack

Tammy Varghese, Kate Motaung2025-02-19T11:50:28+00:00February 19th, 2025|Anxiety, Featured, Individual Counseling|

Panic attacks are more common than people realize. However, they may also be more challenging to recognize. A panic attack occurs when a person’s anxiety has been going on for some time, and they are stuck in a fight or flight response. This is when the parasympathetic nervous system continues to feel fear even when there’s no stimulus or reason to feel that fear. Panic can happen both in public and in private. A panic attack can cause embarrassment and humiliation, especially in a social situation. A panic attack can occur in an instant; they are challenging to detect because a person can be in the middle of the conversation and realize they are having a panic attack. 4 Ways to Stop a Panic Attack Panic attack symptoms mimic heart attack symptoms. A person may feel pain in the chest, a constant sense of fear, tingling or numbness in the arm, sweating palms, a shaking or fearful feeling, shortness of breath, etc. These symptoms can range from mild to severe and may cause someone to go to the emergency room. However, there are ways to stop a panic attack from getting too severe. Here are four ways to stop a panic attack: 1. Go Somewhere Alone Anxiety symptoms are complex enough to deal with. It can be uncomfortable if it happens in a social situation. They may want to hide the symptoms, so they don’t have to tell others what they feel. However, this can add to their stress if they fear peer rejection. It is essential to have someone supportive of you with you when you’re having a panic attack. If you sense your anxiety has been at a high level, let the supportive person know. If you need to leave, figure out a signal or word you [...]

Comments Off

12 Quick Coping Mechanisms for Stress

12 Quick Coping Mechanisms for Stress

Kate Motaung2024-10-30T09:07:56+00:00October 26th, 2024|Anxiety, Depression, Featured, Personal Development, Spiritual Development|

Have you noticed your response when you get a shock, like your car not starting? Or the slowly mounting worries as a deadline approaches? Almost all of us cope with the negative effects of stress every day. Whether we endure long-term, low-grade stress or periods of acute stress, both have significant effects on our bodies and minds. Consistent feelings of tension should not be ignored. Fortunately, we can understand what happens inside our bodies and adopt simple coping mechanisms for stress to help neutralize the harmful effects of daily stress. Your body’s reaction to stress, whether sudden or ongoing, is to engage your nervous system and open the adrenaline and cortisol taps into your bloodstream. These hormones increase our pulse, cause our blood sugar to climb, and push up our blood pressure. When you get a fright, this physiological reaction helps you deal with it better than you would have otherwise. But most of the stress you experience is chronic in the form of financial insecurity and challenging relationships. This stress prevents our bodies from calming down properly, and this damages our health. Do you recognize any of these symptoms of chronic stress? Anxiety and depression, weight gain, memory loss, stroke, and heart disease. Being able to recognize your body’s warning signs will help you take consistent and increased action to mitigate the effects of stress. It would do you the world of good to speak with a healthcare professional with the appropriate skills and experience if you are dealing with any of these symptoms: Inability to focus Frequent, terrible headaches Being bored by activities that used to interest you Inexplicable weight loss or increase Feelings of loneliness, alienation, or insignificance Always feeling angry and irritable Protracted periods of inadequate sleep Persistent worrying or compulsive thinking Too much alcohol [...]

Comments Off

Facing Anxiety about Death

Facing Anxiety about Death

Caitlin Mallery2025-04-24T07:59:04+00:00December 28th, 2023|Aging and Geriatric Issues, Anxiety, Featured, Individual Counseling|

Death is the great inevitability of life. Yet despite this certainty, many have some degree of fear or anxiety about death. In its most intense form, thanatophobia (the fear of death) can hinder you from fully living your life. Others may live with the fear hovering in the back of their mind, not always conscious of it. For some, fear may only come in certain situations. And sometimes it is not your own death that causes fear. The thought of loved ones dying is equally anxiety-inducing. People do all sorts of things to prevent death, from healthy diets and exercise to wearing seatbelts and going through surgery. But while death can be postponed it cannot be cancelled. Each person needs to come to terms with death. As a Christian, you have a completely other perspective on death, one informed by your faith and the Bible. Carrollton Christian Counseling can help you explore this perspective. The Bible is a book that often deals with death from one generation to the next until the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That resurrection gives hope for after death. Yet in death, there is also hope. What does the Bible say regarding anxiety about death? My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death have fallen on me. Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me. – Psalm 55:4-5, NIV David, the writer of many Psalms, had much reason to experience anxiety about death. He spent many days running from men who wanted him dead. He experienced loss, physical suffering, and exhaustion. Yet he knew who truly had his life in His hand. Our God is a God who saves; from the Sovereign Lord comes escape from death. – Psalm 68:20, NIV While David may have been afraid of men who [...]

Comments Off

How to Stop Worrying: Causes and Remedies

How to Stop Worrying: Causes and Remedies

Kate Motaung2025-05-14T15:52:35+00:00November 29th, 2022|Anxiety, Featured, Individual Counseling, Spiritual Development|

In order to stop worrying, it is important to recognize that one of the many gifts that the Lord created human beings with is our remarkable capacity for thought. People can think ahead and map out future events in a way that allows them to plan, anticipate potential issues and obstacles and develop strategies to deal with them. Carrollton Christian Counseling can help you use this gift in a healthy, faith-based way to manage anxiety and cultivate peace of mind. This is an amazing capacity that can help a person achieve goals as diverse as getting a college degree, working through a difficult patch in marriage, building a successful business, etc. Being able to think ahead thus helps us to adapt to the world around us and navigate it well. However, at times our minds can be like a hamster wheel, endlessly turning but not going anywhere or doing anything meaningful. Mulling over things that might occur endlessly can leave a person feeling anxious because we are uncertain of the outcome or are afraid of the possibilities that might emerge in the future. When we fear the future possibility of failure, getting injured, or experiencing loss of various kinds, that can generate the mental anguish that we commonly label as “worry.” A simplistic way to think of the distinction between anxiety and worry is that while anxiety mostly affects our bodies, worry tends to reside more in our heads. Worry is closely tied to our efforts to resolve an issue that is uncertain but that carries the potential for negative consequences. And so we can dwell on an upcoming physical exam and find ourselves thinking about all the possible negative outcomes from it. Or if a loved one or colleague leaves us a message with those dreaded words “We [...]

Comments Off

Anxiety

CONTACT INFO

Carrollton Christian Counseling

ABOUT US