“I didn’t think this would set my anxiety off.”

“I feel like anxiety is ruining my life.”

“I don’t know why I’m having anxiety right now.”

All of these things are saying people have for when they are trying to deal with an unexpected anxiety attack. 

Anxiety is a topic that is being talked about more and more in modern day. Learning what causes it can be key to dealing with it. 

Triggers is a stimulus in the brain that causes a reaction in the body. These triggers are things to look out for when you start to feel anxiety. 

Stress

Whether it is work, school, family situations, trauma or some other high pressure situation in your life, stress can be a big trigger for anxiety. Stress is your body’s reaction to a situation and anxiety is your body’s reaction to that stress. The key here is that stress is a trigger. 

Going through everyday life and trying to manage your stress levels to not be overwhelming will help in the long run. 

Many people use compartmentalizing as a way to cope with being overwhelmed with everyday events. Keeping each event in your life separate from one another is a way to manage what to focus on. Meaning if you came home from a stressful day at work, keeping that stress at work.

Another way to manage stress is to take it one step at a time. Oftentimes, people get overwhelmed with how much they need to get done and try to do it all at once. But taking a step back and looking at a singular thing at once can help to get things done faster as well as more effectively, while keeping mental health in mind.

Medications

There are so many different kinds of medications in today’s world and even though they can help manage anxiety, sometimes they can have the effect of making anxiety worse. 

Stimulants for example can stimulate the central nervous system causing the person to be restless or nervous and for their brain to be hyperactive as well as making their moods susceptible to changing more often. They also cause blood pressure to rise and in turn, heart rate. 

Medication doses and choices can also cause higher levels of anxiety. Some meds can target parts of your body that trigger anxiety symptoms. There are aspects such as caffeine Corticosteroids that change the way your body’s functions. Both of these make the user irritable and anxious. 

There are many different kinds of medications that are taken that can be a trigger for anxiety, so making sure you know what you’re taking and the side effects of it is key. 

New Phases in Life

Our lives change on a daily basis. We each react to those big and small adjustments differently. Some can take it really well and be relatively unphased. And others, take a moment longer to get used to those changes. Which isn’t a bad thing. But can be hard to handle when it is a trigger for anxiety. 

Feeling out of control, losing a routine you liked, getting out of your comfort zone and more can cause the brain to go into fight or flight mode. The feeling of your life upending or changing too much is overwhelming and on top of that, not knowing how to handle it or go about the new change can be scary. 

Taking things one step at a time and understanding each step of how each aspect works, helps some people. For others jumping head first into the new phase and trying to instantly adjust works better. Either way, it can be overwhelming. 

This is where knowing yourself comes in. Take the time to understand how your brain works. Do you get overwhelmed easily? Do you work better under pressure in new phases? Or do you have another way of coping and adjusting?

Take the time to find what you work best with and each time you have a new phase of life coming in, take a breath and remember the best way to go about it.

Unhealthy Habits

Remember when you were growing up and were always told to eat your fruits and veggies? Well, this isn’t just a ploy to get kids to eat their veggies. It is actually much more true than you think. 

Having a well rounded meal will actually help to boost your mood, give you energy, help brain function and about a million more things. 

Getting a well balanced meal can help you to be more active. Being active keeps your heart healthy as well as your brain and muscle health. 

Nurturing unhealthy habits can cause your body to not function properly, therefore causing stress which triggers anxiety. 

Sleep Deprivation 

Brain fog is a real thing. It is feeling less aware or less in tune with what’s going on around you. It is your brain unable to function correctly and a big cause of it is sleep deprivation. 

Losing sleep causes your brain to not function correctly. Making you dizzy, unable to think or do everyday tasks the right way. It puts a lot of stress on your body. You become irritable, feel on edge and stressed which can be a trigger for anxiety. 

On average, adults should be getting anywhere between 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night. If you are not consistently getting enough sleep it can build up over time and cause lasting issues. 

These issues such as obesity, anxiety, depression, diabetes and more can last for a long time, or even for your lifetime. 

Watching out for these triggers can be a game changer when trying to manage anxiety. Managing your body and being aware of the things that set you off is really important to getting ahold of your anxiety. 

It may take a little longer than what you’d like to figuring out your triggers, but asking for help or taking time to self reflect can help assist you.