Your heart speeds up, your palms sweat, and your breathing becomes shallow and quick.
When faced with a situation outside your comfort zone, your body’s naturalfight-or-flight responsekicks in.
Sometimes this response can be helpful.
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It helps you stay alert, motivated, and ready to do your best.
However, it can also vary in intensity depending on the person and the situation.
These feelings can be manageable for some people but more overwhelming for others.
The great news is that there are ways to make situational anxiety more manageable.
Such tactics often include self-help strategies like deep breathing.
Or it might entail talking to your therapist about treatments that can help.
Symptoms of Situational Anxiety
Feeling a little stressed or anxious in response to unfamiliar situations is normal.
When you encounter a challenge or potential threat, this stress helps prepare your body to respond.
Too much anxiety, however, can create distressing symptoms that make it hard to focus.
Such situations can also sometimes trigger apanic attack, which is an episode of intense anxiety or fear.
To prevent these symptoms, people may sometimes begin avoiding situations that they know will trigger an anxiety response.
Specific phobias involve an irrational and intense fear of a specific situation or object.
If you suspect you are experiencing situational anxiety, talk to your doctor.
Your doctor will ask you questions about the nature, duration, and severity of your anxiety symptoms.
It is important to distinguish between situational anxiety andgeneralized anxiety disorder(GAD).
What Causes Situational Anxiety?
What causes situational anxiety can differ from one person to the next.
What Triggers Situational Anxiety?
Situational anxiety can be linked to a number of different parameters, experiences, or situations.
Novelty and unfamiliarity are common themes for many of the situations that trigger situational anxiety.
In many cases, situational anxiety begins to lessen once the situations become more familiar.
Psychotherapy, medication, or a combination of the two are options for treating problems with anxiety.
Because these medications carry a risk for dependence, they are typically only prescribed for short-term use.
Be Prepared
Situational anxiety often arises when you feel unprepared to deal with an unfamiliar situation.
When you find yourself thinking this way, challenge your thoughts with more realistic, positive ones.
Do you tend to isolate yourself from others?
Do you make impulsive purchases to make yourself feel better?
Or do you turn to emotional eating or alcohol to de-stress?
Avoidance is also an unhealthy way of coping with anxiety.
Regularly practicing these coping strategies can help you gradually decrease situational anxiety.
For more mental health resources, see ourNational Helpline Database.
Munir S, Takov V.Generalized anxiety disorder.
In: StatPearls [Internet].
Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing.
Office on Women’s Health.
