Just stepping away from something stressful for a few minutes or taking time away from your normal routines and thoughts can give you enough space and distance to feel calmer. Read a book or a magazine, even if it's only for a few minutes. Run yourself a bath, watch a film, play with a pet or try out a new recipe.
Your emotional brain is overactive.
When the brain's emotional centers and fear centers are overactive, it can be associated with depression and anxiety. If you have this common brain pattern, you may stay busy as a way to distract yourself from your anxious thoughts and feelings of hopelessness.
Relaxing the mind
Soak in a warm bath. Listen to soothing music. Practice mindful meditation. The goal of mindful meditation is to focus your attention on things that are happening right now in the present moment.
A big event or a buildup of smaller stressful life situations may trigger excessive anxiety — for example, a death in the family, work stress or ongoing worry about finances. Personality. People with certain personality types are more prone to anxiety disorders than others are. Other mental health disorders.
Are you always waiting for disaster to strike or excessively worried about things such as health, money, family, work, or school? If so, you may have a type of anxiety disorder called generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). GAD can make daily life feel like a constant state of worry, fear, and dread.
The most common causes of pressure and pain in the head are tension headaches and migraines. Both of these conditions respond well to treatments. In rare cases, pressure in the head is a sign of a more serious condition. If the issue persists, you should see a doctor.
A stressful situation — whether something environmental, such as a looming work deadline, or psychological, such as persistent worry about losing a job — can trigger a cascade of stress hormones that produce well-orchestrated physiological changes.
Stress can cause an imbalance of neural circuitry subserving cognition, decision making, anxiety and mood that can increase or decrease expression of those behaviors and behavioral states. This imbalance, in turn, affects systemic physiology via neuroendocrine, autonomic, immune and metabolic mediators.
Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, increases sugars (glucose) in the bloodstream, enhances your brain's use of glucose and increases the availability of substances that repair tissues. Cortisol also curbs functions that would be nonessential or harmful in a fight-or-flight situation.
Because multitasking “has been found to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline,” the human brain is simultaneously overloaded and overstimulated. In addition to the neurological consequences of overload, the psychological effects are just as severe.
Causes of pressure include allergies, sinusitis, upper respiratory infections, and headache disorders. More serious causes include ICP, brain aneurysm, and brain injury.
Intracranial hypertension (IH) is a build-up of pressure around the brain. It can happen suddenly, for example, as the result of a severe head injury, stroke or brain abscess. This is known as acute IH. It can also be a persistent, long-lasting problem, known as chronic IH.
Overthinking is not a recognized mental disorder all by itself. However, research has found it's often associated with other mental health conditions, including: Depression. Anxiety disorders.
In addition, medications originally designed for depression, the SSRIs (Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Lexapro, Effexor, Cymbalta, and others), are also capable of lowering the underlying level of anxiety which takes a lot of steam out of this phenomenon.
One important step in reversing the anxiety cycle is gradually confronting feared situations. If you do this, it will lead to an improved sense of confidence, which will help reduce your anxiety and allow you to go into situations that are important to you.