What are anxious feelings and when should I consider taking action for them?
We all have mental health, just as we all have physical health.
Your mental health can change throughout your time at university and is often impacted by situations relating to family, relationships, work and the external environment.
We all experience anxious feelings from time to time. They may get especially intense when we are facing stressful life events such as an upcoming exam, job interview or difficulties in our relationships. Anxious feelings can be really unpleasant; we may become tense and fearful and may get uncomfortable bodily sensations like a dry throat, sweaty palms and a racing heart.
We also may experience daunting thoughts and mental images about worst-case scenario situations and how we will be unable to cope.
Occasional anxious feelings are normal and although unpleasant, aren’t harmful.
In fact, a moderate amount of anxiety can help motivate us. However, if you find yourself experiencing anxious feelings most or all of the time, then you should consider taking some steps to reduce them so you can lead a more fulfilling life.
We’ve developed this guidance using NHS resources on anxiety. It provides some simple tips and a range of external resources that will help you to start taking control of your anxiety today.
For more, please visit NHS Mental Health for lots of information, guidance and support resources.
We all have mental health and wellbeing, which are connected and can change often. This continuum demonstrates how all of us, no matter our background or difficulties, can have optimal wellbeing with good self-help and support in place.
There is a ‘continuum’ along which we can have better or worse wellbeing, whether or not we are already facing mental health difficulties.
We can all be at a different point on the continuum, at different times:
Optimal mental wellbeing with mental health difficulties
Optimal mental wellbeing with minimal mental health difficulties
Minimal mental wellbeing with minimal mental health difficulties
Minimal mental wellbeing with mental health difficulties
What are the signs of feeling anxious?
Feelings:
Thinking styles:
You often worry ‘what if’ something bad happens
Your mind jumps from worry to worry
You often imagine the worst-case scenarios
You are always on the lookout for danger
Physical symptoms:
Tense body/muscular pain
Dizzy/faint
Chest tight or painful
Stomach churning
Trembling or tingling sensations
Heart racing/ palpitations
Breathing faster or slower than usual
Concentration difficulties
Behavior patterns:
Avoid doing things you would like to
Pace around/find it hard to relax
Snap at people too easily
Get easily flustered
Talk very quickly
What can I do to reduce my anxious feelings?
First steps you can take to help yourself
Check out NHS Every Mind Matters: Feeling Anxious?, which also contains a video you can watch.
There are two things we have direct influence over that affect how anxious we feel:
Our behaviours: Taking positive action
Our thought patterns: Noticing and re-framing our thinking patterns
All the self-help strategies for combatting anxious feelings fall into one of these two categories.
Challenging our behaviours
Even if you don’t feel like confiding in others, simply spending time with people can boost our mood. There are a number of services and communities available at King’s.
The Chaplains are available at each of the campuses to see any student or member of staff in confidence. You don’t have to have a spiritual crisis or be religious to see a Chaplain; they are practiced listeners and have a wealth of experience in supporting people.
Find out more in How can the Chaplaincy support me?
The KCLSU Positive Peers run a series of student-led workshops that centre around giving evidence-based tips and tools for improving wellbeing and battling low mood or mild depression. The workshops are a supportive and welcoming space where you can share experiences and learn from other students.
Find out more in What does KCLSU offer to support my wellbeing?
Student groups & societies
Joining on of the KCLSU Student Groups is an effective way to meet people.
There's a huge range of societies, sports and other activity groups designed to cater to all kinds of interests and passions. Developing a social support network and creating connection with others through a shared interest can be a great way to improve your mood.
Self-care activities are things that we enjoy that enhance mental, emotional and physical health.
They can be as simple as going for a walk, calling a friend, doing something creative, eating a healthy meal or taking a soothing bath.
Whatever the activity is, doing something kind for yourself can be very beneficial in reducing anxious feelings, so it’s important to find time for. Check out some self-care tips from Student Minds.
Whether it’s finding time for self-care activities or starting a piece of coursework, we can make things easier by breaking our goals down into small actionable steps and setting just one to three simple tasks to complete for the day.
This sense of accomplishment can help lift our mood and create momentum to carry out more tasks. Check out LinkedIn Learning for videos on goal setting.
Maintain a healthy lifestyle
Eating regularly and keeping your blood sugar stable can make a difference to your mood and energy levels. Also, drinking water and eating vegetables can improve how we feel.
Although drugs and alcohol may provide a short-lived distraction from your anxieties, they are likely to exacerbate your feelings in the long run.
Create a set bedtime and wake up time that you try to abide by every day. Sleep can have a significant impact on your anxiety.
Create a morning routine you look forward to that helps you start the day on a positive note, which often sets the tone for the rest of the day.
Try making one small change at a time to help you feel more confident in adapting a healthier lifestyle. Every step is important!
Check out:
King’s Sport & Wellness Active Wellness Scheme is an initiative to help anyone within the King’s community who has mental or physical health issues to use exercise therapy. The scheme will show you how to begin changing your lifestyle for the better with simple, effective and personalised programs provided by one of our expert coaches.
Find out more in What does King's Sport & Wellness have on offer?
Couch to 5K is a running plan for absolute beginners. Often when trying to get into exercise, we can overdo it, feel defeated and give up when we’re just getting started. Couch to 5K works because it starts with a mix of running and walking to gradually build up your fitness and stamina.
Check out Get running with Couch to 5K.
Challenging our thought patterns
Identifying thoughts which are contributing to your feelings of anxiety by writing them down.
If you need some prompts to get you started:
What am I thinking right now?
What am I worried will happen?
What is making me feel anxious?
What bad thing do I expect to happen?
Create some detachment from each thought by acknowledging that they are just subjective ‘thoughts’ rather than objective facts.
You can achieve this by putting the phrase “I am simply having the thought that…” in front of your thought.
Although our thoughts often feel like the absolute truth, they are just our brain’s internal commentary about our world, which is often highly inaccurate.
Realising our thoughts are just thoughts can weaken the power they have over us.
Challenge unhelpful thoughts by thinking of a more balanced alternative.
You can write these alternatives down somewhere accessible to you, such as your phone, to refer back to when you are feeling anxious.
Some questions you can ask to help you come up with more helpful alternatives:
What is the evidence that this thought is true? What is the evidence that this thought is not true?
Have I confused a thought with a fact?
What would I tell a friend if he/she had the same thought?
Can I be 100% sure that ___________ will happen?
How many times has ___________ happened before?
Is ___________ so important that my future depends on it? Will this matter 6 months from now?
What is the worst that could happen?
If it did happen, what can I do to cope with it?
Is my judgment based on the way I feel, instead of facts?
Am I worrying about something that cannot be changed?
What is the worst that could happen? If it did happen, would it be a big deal on the grand scale of things?
Develop a journaling practice
Gratitude journaling is simple method to increase your day-to-day feelings of wellbeing.
It involves writing at least one thing daily that you feel grateful for in your life. If you cannot think of anything, you can start with the very simple things that not everyone may have such as:
You may find that you are able to identify a lot of positives in your life that you hadn’t previously thought of.
Keep a mood journal. Note how your mood improves or worsens throughout the day and what you were doing at the time. This can help you identify behavioural patterns and triggers that make you feel better or worse.
Additional resources which may help you
What are my next steps?
Evidence shows that creating a plan for when and where we will take time to do an activity means that we are far more likely to follow through with it. Choose one exercise from the tools and strategies in this article that you will do this week and decide when and where you are going to do so.
Complete the following sentence to set your intention:
What are the signs that I may need further help for my anxious feelings?
Your anxious feelings are present all or most of the time, even when you cannot identify an immediate reason for you to feel anxious.
Your anxious feelings persist for extended periods of time, even when the situation that initiated them has already passed.
You experience secondary symptoms that are impairing your quality of life such as: fatigue, weakness, sleeping problems, inability to concentrate, headaches and nausea.
You start avoiding important activities you would regularly engage in because they make you anxious; for example going to class, socialising with friends, getting on public transport or being in any other busy spaces.
You experience panic attacks, which can be extremely frightening. You may feel an intense dread that onsets suddenly followed by symptoms like sweating, palpitations (being able to feel your heartbeat), trembling and difficulty breathing.
How can I get help if my anxious feelings are impacting my studies?
Personal tutor: If your mental health is impacting your studies, you should speak to your personal tutor. They can check in with you while you access help, and work with you to determine if there is further support you can access at King’s. This could be for your studies as well as your mental health and wellbeing.
Find out more in What do I talk about with my personal tutor?
Mitigating circumstances: Mental health difficulties are a valid reason to apply for mitigating circumstances for assessments if you are particularly struggling.
Find out more in What are mitigating circumstances?
How can I access professional help?
Emergency support
If you feel like you cannot keep yourself safe and you are in immediate danger of harming yourself or attempting to take your life:
What support is there in King’s Residences?
King’s Residences provide an in-house welfare team at every residence, with a member of staff who is on call out of hours.
If you are in a hall of residence, you can access emotional support and discuss how you’re feeling with a Residence Welfare Lead. They will listen without judgment and connect you to our support services. They’re on duty every day from 20.00–08.00 and all day on Saturday and Sunday.
You can contact them by asking reception for their details or finding the notice board with this information in your residence. Find out more at King’s Accommodation: Welfare.
