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Dr Chido Rwafa

Mental Wellness

As discussed in previous articles, mental health is defined as a state of well-being in which an individual realises his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a meaningful contribution to their community. 

Today we will demystify anxiety which is a common challenge that can affect our mental well-being. 

Anxiety is basically excessive worry and fear. Worry is a common experience for many of us. We often worry about life stressors such as relationship or family tensions, work challenges, finances, our health, our plans, wishes, hopes and dreams. 

Worry usually involves repetitive negative thoughts around our problems, often focusing on how big the problems are rather than on any potential solutions. 

This can make us fearful and scared. We react in fear if we feel our problems are threatening our sense of safety or security. 

Worry and fear though normal reactions to life stressors, if not managed, can result in anxiety. 

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is an abnormal and overwhelming sense of fear triggered by a threat or what we perceive to be a threat to us. Anxiety affects our thoughts, our emotions, our behaviour and often causes physical symptoms as well.

When we are anxious, our thinking may be affected, we may have:

l uncontrollable worry or fearful thoughts

apprehension, thoughts about the worst-case scenario 

 doubts about our capacity to deal with our problems 

 difficulty focusing our attention or concentrating

Emotionally, we may be:

 scared or afraid

 overwhelmed

 have an overwhelming feeling of dread

These fearful thoughts and emotions can result in ‘flight, fight or freeze’ responses in our bodies where we either run away or avoid the challenges we are facing; gear ourselves for a fight or become numb to or frazzled by our challenges. 

When we are anxious, we can also experience many physical symptoms such as:

 dizziness 

 frequent headaches 

 sweating profusely 

 feeling like there is a lump in one’s throat 

 losing our appetite 

 our muscles becoming tense causing us to have soreness in our neck, shoulders or lower back 

 heart palpitations 

 chest pain or heaviness or difficulty breathing 

 nausea, abdominal pain or diarrhoea

Types of anxiety disorders

Anxiety can result in panic attacks, generalised anxiety disorder or phobias. Anxiety can affect both adults and children.

Panic attacks are sudden episodes of intense fear with severe physical fear reactions where there is no actual danger or apparent cause for the distress. 

The symptoms are often severe enough to cause one to rush to hospital in fear that these symptoms may result in serious body harm. 

If these panic attacks become repeated this may become a panic disorder. 

Generalised anxiety disorder is characterised by a constant fear and worry about everyday life that is difficult to control, being worried and excessively fearful about everyday things and worry which is not in keeping with the actual threat. 

When this excessive worry starts to affect our ability to function this becomes a disorder. 

Phobias are excessive and irrational fears. 

These can be fears of specific objects like spiders, blood or dogs, specific activities like flying or speaking in public or specific situations such as small spaces or public transport. 

Although the object, activity or situation may pose little to no actual danger, the person experiencing the phobia can be crippled with fear. 

Anxiety in children can sometimes be experienced as restlessness, irritability and tantrums, emotional meltdowns and excessive crying, repeated physical symptoms like headaches and stomach aches, and refusing to go to school. 

Young children may experience separation anxiety when they have to be apart from their parents or other caregivers. 

Children who are anxious may also experience selective mutism where they “freeze” and become mute in certain social environments sometimes, including school while being able to talk quite normally when at home. 

How can I cope with worry, fear and anxiety? 

1. Acknowledge the stresses, worries and anxieties that we have in our lives. This requires us to have emotional awareness. This is being aware of one’s distressing thoughts and emotions as well as knowing what triggers the distress. 

To be able to acknowledge one’s anxiety we also need to develop our emotional literacy. This is our understanding of the signs and symptoms of anxiety and other mental health problems. 

2. Talk about what is stressing you, worrying you or causing you to get anxious with trusted people in your life. This will require you to be emotionally vulnerable and open to others. 

This is something we need to learn to do regularly not just when we are in a crisis. We should not “do” life alone but we need to learn to navigate the challenges of life with others. 

3. Develop a problem-solving approach to life. Many times anxiety results from problems in our life that we are struggling to manage or solve. Often, we try to solve several problems that we have all at once and this can result in us becoming overwhelmed. 

If you find yourself getting anxious, it helps to stop and reflect on the challenges that maybe triggering that anxiety, to define them clearly and prioritise them in terms of what needs to be tackled first. 

You can then reflect on possible solutions for each challenge looking at pros and cons of each proposed solution before attempting some of those possible solutions. 

This problem-solving approach to challenges allows us to think through our problems rather than just worrying about them and getting anxious.

4. Reach out for help if you need it. If you feel the stress, worry and anxiety is now affecting your ability to function, work productively and contribute meaningfully, or if you have developed some of the disorders described in this article, please reach out to your nearest health care provider for help.

Look out for next week’s article as we continue to demystify mental health and wellness when we will unpack depression and try to understand it better. 

Association of Health Care Funders of Zimbabwe (AHFoZ) article written by: Dr. Chido Rwafa Madzvamutse, Consultant Psychiatrist, +263714987729) (www.ahfoz.org; [email protected])