How to find and manage your anxiety triggers
For someone suffering from an anxiety disorder, panic attacks can be the most destructive force you can experience. You lash out at loved ones, you act irrationally and can even become a danger to those around you, and yourself.
But when it’s all over and you look back at the event you may even wonder why it happened in the first place. The event may not have been as bad as you thought it was, and it feels like the panic attack came out of nowhere. You may even feel ashamed because you feel that you could have, and should have handled that better.
Trying to figure out what it was all about may leave you feeling lost, confused and even a little crazy. Why did you react like that? How did that event spark a full-blown panic attack?
The simple answer, it didn't.
Your anxiety trigger did.
What are anxiety triggers?
Anxiety triggers are events, situations, places or even people that raise your stress levels to more than normal. This could be things like driving in heavy traffic, walking in a quiet street (and feeling unsafe) or dealing with temperamental people or bullies.
You leave the situation feeling overwhelmed, helpless and tense.
It helps if you think of your stress levels as a bucket that’s slowly being filled by a dripping tap, and you can only handle so much before you overflow and have a panic attack.
The bucket is you, the water is daily stress and when it overflows, that’s a panic attack.
We all experience stress daily, but sometimes events happen that are like a flood of stress - the tap gets open wide. And, at other times, tiny situations stress us out more than they should. It’s like the tap is open, but not quite to the point of gushing. But it's still filling up the bucket faster than normal.
Anxiety triggers are situations that cause that tap to open wide, but not to the point where it’s gushing. This is why we don't notice them right away.
We don't notice that we become a little more stressed out than normal. It’s only when another stressful situation comes along and opens that tap even wider, that we lose our ability to cope, and this leads to a panic attack.
Anxiety triggers may not always trigger the actual panic attack, but they do push our anxiety levels up and make it difficult to handle yet another stressful situation when it comes up. We just don't have the resources to handle a second stressful situation and so our bucket overflows and we have a panic attack.
This is why seemingly small events can lead to panic attacks.
While it can be very difficult to stop a panic attack while it is happening, the ideal time to actually stop a panic attack is before it happens.
That is why it helps to know what your triggers are and have strategies in place to bring your stress levels back down.
When you know and realise that your stress bucket is almost full, you can avoid another stressful situation by using coping strategies to calm back down, preventing another panic attack.
It all comes down to knowing what your triggers are and having strategies in place to release or manage that stress.
How to find your anxiety triggers
While anxiety triggers may not be obvious, they are pretty easy to find when you pay attention and know what to look for.
You will need to pay close attention to how you feel, and what your body is doing throughout the day to figure this out.
Here's how to do it:
Step 1: Pay attention to yourself
For a week or 2 pay close attention to how you feel. Check-in on yourself hourly and notice when you tend to tense up.
It helps to figure out what your body feels like when your stress levels begin to rise. Some people experience palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness. Others feel it in their muscles, they get muscle pain in their back and shoulders. Some people start grinding their teeth while others get a runny tummy.
These can all be quiet symptoms of increased stress levels so it helps to figure out what your own unique set of symptoms look like.
Step 2: Keep a journal
Once you know what your own personal stress symptoms look like, you can start tracking when and where they occurred (as well as what they manifest as).
It helps to have a journal where you track your symptoms, the situations that caused them to flare up and to reflect on the day.
Ask yourself questions like:
- What were you doing when your stress symptoms started acting up?
- Who were you talking to?
- Or, What were you talking about that could have triggered the stress?
You don't need to wait for a panic attack to hit before you begin to take better care of yourself. Make it a habit to constantly check in on your anxiety levels.
It also helps to have a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is no stress at all and 10 is a panic attack.
Then, in your journal keep track of how you feel throughout the day. Do this every day for a few weeks to get a good idea of what's going on.
Make sure to also record what you were doing that made you feel stressed or relaxed.
This will help you figure out which time of the day is most stressful for you and why. Once you know that you can start creating strategies to bring that stress right down during those key times.
Look for patterns and identify which scenarios result in the worst symptoms.
These are your anxiety triggers. These are the situations that push your stress levels way up and precede a panic attack.
What do you do about your triggers?
Once you know what your anxiety triggers are, you can start managing them to bring the stress they cause back down.
I found 2 very effective ways of doing this:
1) Change the situation so that is becoming less stressful
Start by writing down what your triggers are and what about them stresses you out. Now, think of ways you can make the situation less stressful.
For example, driving in heavy traffic stresses me out, so I change my schedule so that I don't have to drive in peak-time traffic, I’ll stay at the gym longer for instance.
If it’s a person that stresses you out, figure out why. Is it what they say or do? Consider changing the topic of conversation when the topic stresses you out.
Is it where you meet? Suggest a new meeting place.
Is it the person in particular? If that person is toxic and makes you more stressed out afterwards, consider their value to you. Is it worth having a friend like this if it's destructive for you?
2) Find a way to release the stress after exposure to the trigger
Releasing stress is like poking a few extra holes in that bucket. By letting out the stress after that anxiety trigger you actively avoid a panic attack later on. This definitely counts as self-love and self-care when you have anxiety.
The key here is finding out what works for you.
You may find that exercise, a nap, a good meal or creating something helps bring your stress levels back down.
Keep track of what works best for you and write it down in your journal so you don't forget. Then work on introducing that into your weekly routine so that you bring down your stress levels each week, whether you've been triggered or not.
This will help you cope with the craziness of life in general.
The only real way to avoid a panic attack is to learn how to manage your anxiety levels and to make sure that they remain stable.
Knowing what your anxiety triggers are will help you do this.
Once you know what your triggers are, you can be more careful when they come up and take back control so that they don't lead to a panic attack.
It may take a bit of effort, but it’s well worth it.
If you’re ready to transform the way you confront stress and learn how to turn overwhelming situations into triumphs then my “The Zen of Living” ebook bundle is exactly what you need.
In this collection of powerful strategies and expert insights you’ll learn how to overcome negative self-talk, break the cycle of overthinking, and conquer social anxiety. Free yourself from the clutches of overwhelm.
