Helping improve your mental health.
what does your score mean?
it falls into the moderate anxiety category.
Remember that your actual score represents a range – you may be at the top or bottom of this range. Your answers suggest that you experience moderate anxiety and that at times it might be hard to manage. And that’s okay. You can make improvements and we want to help you. We all experience some stress, worry and anxiety at times throughout our life. It can be hard however, if we always feel this way (or at least a lot of the time).
We want to help you with that.
Now that you know your anxiety level, what’s next?
Continue reading and over the next 2 minutes you’ll learn more about worry and what you can do to start reducing it.
Life gives us ample opportunities to experience anxiety. From relationships and finances to health and even upcoming holidays, it can sometimes feel that there is no end to things that make us feel anxious. When we add in work-related challenges, it makes sense that we might feel anxious some of the time (or a lot of the time) and that’s okay. In fact, it means that you are human.
Is it stress or anxiety?
Both stress and anxiety are emotional responses, but stress is typically caused by an external trigger while anxiety is defined by persistent, excessive worries that don’t go away, even in the absence of a stressor. Both anxiety and stress can lead to a nearly identical set of symptoms. In some ways, whether you’re feeling anxious or stressed, the feelings can be quite similar.
Some stress can be helpful
Throughout our day, we can experience events and situations that cause us to feel anxious. That’s pretty normal. In fact, stress can actually be helpful. Short term exposure to stress is normal, expected and vital for survival. The body’s stress response has been a critical component to the survival of our species by helping us respond to real or perceived threats. Stress also plays a role in task execution, performance enhancement, and it can help boost memory function. This all sounds pretty good to those of us working in a high paced, high stress work environment. Stress, bring it!
But…
While our bodies are designed to manage and flourish under some amounts of stress, too much stress can lead to all kinds of negative health effects – including anxiety.
Symptoms and feelings of anxiety
When you’re feeling the effects of moderate anxiety, it might be helpful to know how these feelings show up for you in your everyday life. Some symptoms of anxiety can include:
Irritability
Trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, or not feeling rested
Changes in appetite and dietary choices
Changes in exercise behaviours
The use of coping strategies that may not be helpful (ie. substance use, alcohol, gambling, etc.)
Physical sensations like tightness in your chest, tension in your shoulders, headaches, even dizziness
Difficulty concentrating or staying on task
Persistent worry or fear, often irrational
Feelings of apprehension
Anxious thoughts like, “I’ll never be able to cope with this”
Anxious beliefs like, “Admitting I feel anxious is a weakness”
Anxious behaviours like avoiding feared situations, people or activities
Excessive (relative to the context) physical symptoms like a racing heart, sweating, feeling short of breath, trembling, feeling restless or nervous, and sensing impending danger or doom
Panic attacks
We hope that taking the survey and learning a little bit about anxiety has helped you to become more aware of how anxiety may affect you. Your employer is also taking steps to understand the mental health of your team better. You’ll hear from them soon regarding next steps. Take care!
