Anxiety and the Body
Anxiety is a natural physical reaction to a perceived threat. You may have heard the term 'fight, flight or freeze' which describes how animals in the wild respond to possible harm.1 Imagine you are locked in a room with a tiger. Your body will prepare you to run from the tiger, to fight it, or if you cannot do either, you might freeze in the hope the danger will pass. Perceiving a threat triggers a response from the brain and the nervous system. This makes us breathe harder and faster as we need oxygen for fuel which makes our heart beat faster to take energy to our lungs. Functions that are 'non-essential' , such as digestion, the bowel or the bladder, are shut down, often making people feel sick or needing the toilet.
The stress response is entirely natural and involves glands, such as the pituitary and adrenal glands. This releases hormones into the body including estrogen, testosterone and cortisol, which influence our stress response, including a racing heart rate and breathing quickly. It is an evolutionary response to danger, but the trouble with cancer is that it is difficult to switch off this response. The brain perceives the cancer, the treatment, the scans, even the hospital itself as a threat, even though there is no immediate physical danger present. However, the body’s systems are triggered, and we feel the effects: a racing heart, sweating, trembling and headaches.How you can manage anxiety?
1 Cannon, Walter (1932). Wisdom of the Body. United States: W.W. Norton & Company.
