Anxiety is an alert response from our nervous system which has its physical (palpitations, chest tightness…), cognitive (catastrophic thoughts, obsessive thoughts…) and behavioral (avoidance strategies, reassurance…) manifestations. 
 
 It can be useful since it alerts us to work for future events. For example, if i have an exam or a date, anxiety (in normal levels) moves us to prepare the exam, study or freshen up for the date. Also, it can be information that something in our environment is not benefiting us (for example, toxic relationships, or unhealthy habits). 
 
Anxiety comes from fear, although they are not the same thing. Fear is a response to an actual real or imagined danger; anxiety is a response to a future real or imagined danger. These dangers are linked to our learning history (past experiences), our circumstances, our attachment style, our emotion regulation strategies … 
 
Anxiety can increase and limit us when we belief what it says and do avoidance strategies (such as not going to the date, procrastinating, over-studying to control the situation, avoiding feeling it by constant distraction…). It’s like trying to push a balloon underwater; when you manage to push it down, it pops up even stronger. Suppression coping has a strong relation with health problems. 
 
 Also, believing it’s dangerous and interpreting its manifestations as something intolerable and negative will increase its intensity. Acceptance of anxiety (which is not overthinking it, avoiding it or been driven by it) is fundamental to start feeling much more in peace. 
 
Having resources such as breathing exercises, meditation, grounding exercises can help us feel more security. 
 
Understanding is also key, here there is an example of a self-registration to start knowing our triggers (external events or internal events such as thoughts), our reactions (behaviors, thoughts…) and their consequences. 
 
This pamphlet will let you identify the different manifestations of anxiety, the stimuli to which it’s associated and an essential way to cope with it, Acceptance. 
 
In this hub you have other pamphlets explaining specific breathing and meditation techniques and others with which you can start detecting and working on those beliefs and thoughts that don’t give you peace. 
 
I hope you can educate yourself with this resources, start digging a bit into yourself and soothing what requires your attention.