Living With Anxiety
Anxiety is a normal part of life — a natural response when we face stress, change or uncertainty. But when anxiety becomes overwhelming, persistent, or interferes with daily life, it may be time to reach out for support. At Progressive Pathways, we believe that living with anxiety doesn’t mean being controlled by it — it means learning powerful tools, building resilience, and moving forward with confidence.
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety involves feelings of worry, nervousness or fear that are strong enough to affect thoughts, behaviours or physical health. While a little anxiety can help us stay alert and focused, persistent or intense anxiety can impact sleep, concentration, relationships and overall well-being.
What you need to know about anxiety:
Anxiety is normal. Everyone experiences anxiety at some point in time. For example, it is normal to feel anxious when on a rollercoaster or before a job interview.
Anxiety is adaptive. It helps us to prepare for real danger (such as a bear jumping out of the woods) or performing at our best (for example, it motivates us to get ready for an important meeting or presentation). When we experience anxiety, it triggers our "fight-flight-freeze" response and gets our body ready to defend itself (for instance, our heart beats faster to pump blood to our muscles so we have the energy to run away or fight off danger). Without it, we would not survive.
Anxiety can become a problem when our body reacts when there is no real danger. It can be helpful to think of anxiety as a smoke alarm. A smoke alarm can help protect us when there is an actual fire, but sometimes the alarm goes off when there isn't a real fire (e.g. burning toast in the toaster). Like a smoke alarm, anxiety is helpful when it alerts us to real danger. But when it goes off when there is no real danger, then we may want to fix it. We don't want to take the batteries out of the alarm in case there is a real fire, but we do want to fix the alarm so that it doesn’t go off every time we make toast.
Your Next Step
Living with anxiety means being proactive. It means recognizing when the worry has gone beyond “just a bad day”, reaching out for help, and taking steps toward calm and clarity.
👉 Interested in learning more?
Connect with us today to schedule an assessment, join a workshop or explore tools tailored for anxiety.
