Why we shouldn’t ‘normalise’ living with anxiety

In this video, business and life coach Tatev Petrosyan challenges the notion that low-grade anxiety is simply the price of living in the modern world, and that the most we can hope for is to ‘manage’ and work around it.

That perspective leads only to unnecessary suffering. After all, anxiety can be insidious, and, because it’s so widespread, yet ‘camouflaged’ amid life’s complexity, we may not even be aware of its presence.

“Anxiety is one of those things that can easily go unnoticed,” she says. “Not because the person is not experiencing debilitating symptoms, but because it’s become so normal for us to live with anxiety that we just shrug it off, or put it down to other things.”

Yet someone may have similar problems without experiencing anxiety or the same level of anxiety, she says.

“Anxiety is a cognitive, psychological experience, and it has to do with the quality of thinking and the level of thinking, regarding our everyday issues,” she clarifies, and the cost of allowing it to persist, unchecked, can significantly downgrade our quality of life.

Assuming that first other underlying medical problems have been ruled out, she reminds us that among the ways anxiety presents itself include:

• heart palpitations,
• dizziness,
• shortness of breath,
• blurred vision
• excessive worrying and fear
• anger
• restlessness
• panic attacks
• memory problems
• controlling behaviours

And the list goes on.

Yet the response to anxiety’s presence in our life should not merely be to ‘manage it’, she says; we should be more ‘ambitious’ than that. A far worthier goal is no longer to experience anxiety, she says – a target that is attainable, not by shouldering the burden all alone, but supported under professional guidance.

To learn more about Tatev Petrosyan’s Life Coaching practice, and to see if her approach might benefit you, click here, or contact her directly at: [email protected].

View the original video here.

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