Why anxiety shows up in your body first, when you only have a few minutes

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Every point here is written so that a bad week is still enough to manage it.

A few minutes is the whole requirement.

If you only do one thing from this page, do the first point below. It is first because it removes the most friction for the least effort.

Your heart rate rises, breathing speeds up and blood moves to your muscles. That is why your hands go cold and your chest feels tight.

The physical symptoms come from the same system that gets you out of the way of a car. It is fast, physical and not very smart.

Because the system is physical, physical things work on it: slow exhales, cold water, walking, moving your shoulders.

The symptoms are uncomfortable but not dangerous. Chest tightness from anxiety does not damage the heart.

The symptoms usually peak within ten minutes and then fall, even if nothing is done. Knowing that the peak is short helps more than it sounds.

Checking your body for symptoms increases your sensitivity to them. This is why health anxiety tends to escalate.

That is a question for a doctor, and one worth asking once. After it has been checked, treating new sensations as anxiety is usually correct.

Avoidance works in the short term and shrinks your world in the long term. This is the pattern CBT is designed to break.

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