Anxiety Archives | Valencia Christian Counseling

Coping With Rising OCD Anxiety from Pressure to Post Perfect Content

Coping With Rising OCD Anxiety from Pressure to Post Perfect Content

Grace Mavindidze2025-04-23T10:33:46+00:00April 23rd, 2025|Anxiety, Featured, Individual Counseling, OCD|

Have you ever had a heavy knot in the pit of your stomach just before hitting “share” online? Even when you get that perfect snap and apply a killer filter to it you are still stuck, staring at the “post” button. Your heart starts beating with your mind running all kinds of thoughts; “Will they like it?”, “Is the caption clever enough?”, or “Is it perfect?” You may be experiencing OCD anxiety. All this pressure for perfect posts is sending OCD anxiety cases in younger people through the roof, leaving them stuck in a continuous circle of overthinking and self-doubt. More and more young people are feeling the weight of digital perfectionism. What’s driving this rise in online posting OCD anxiety? Social media platforms have become such central parts of our lives, especially for young people. The pressure to present a perfect online persona is extreme. In fact, according to the American Psychological Association, almost 45% of teens in the US alone have reported feeling stressed out more by social media than any other trigger. The continuous need for validation by way of likes, comments, and shares fuels OCD anxiety and makes it impossible to break out of that perfectionism cycle. One of the main triggers for anxiety in OCD is the fear of posting something inappropriate or making a mistake. This may lead to hours of editing and re-editing posts, trying to get everything just right. Especially for teenagers, this pressure becomes overwhelming. The very thought of accidentally sharing something that can be misjudged or misinterpreted causes a huge amount of stress. Another way OCD anxiety can play out in the digital age is through digital hoarding. This involves keeping every photo, video, and file for fear of losing something important. Feeling out of control and the need [...]

Night Terrors in Adults: What Are They?

Joanna Kucherera2025-03-11T16:25:24+00:00February 28th, 2025|Anxiety, Depression, Featured, Grief Counseling|

Night terrors, or sleep terrors, are episodes where a sleeping person suddenly begins trembling, sweating, shouting, and may even thrash or walk around as if in a state of fear. These episodes can last anywhere between thirty seconds to an hour or more but are usually over quite quickly. While the person experiencing this episode is unconscious and completely unaware of their actions, it can be distressing for others to witness. Night terrors affect 40% of the child population and only about 2.2% of the adult population. People will generally only experience night terrors as adults if they also experienced them as children. While night terrors can be disruptive to others, they should not cause too much concern for the person experiencing them. They should not be an indicator of poor mental health, for example, though they can be linked to stress and caffeine intake. What are night terrors? Night terrors are part of a broad category of a sleep disorder called parasomnia, of which there are six recognized conditions. These are sleepwalking (somnambulism), teeth grinding, REM sleep behavior disorder, nocturnal sleep-related disorder, nightmares, and night terrors. A person may experience one, all, or a few of these in their lifetime, although commonly they occur during pre-puberty and decline in frequency as we age. Valencia Christian Counseling offers guidance and support to help navigate sleep-related challenges. When we sleep, we experience two types of sleep: non-Rapid Eye Movement sleep (non-REM), and Rapid Eye Movement sleep (REM). In the first stage, we go from dozing off to deep sleep-in cycles over four or more hours. Our brain activity slows and changes, our body temperature drops, and our breathing slows. In the early hours, we begin REM sleep. Our brain activity picks up to the same levels as when we are [...]

Surprising Facts about Anxiety and Panic Attacks that Everyone Needs to Know

Grace Mavindidze2025-03-13T07:19:21+00:00July 5th, 2024|Anxiety, Featured, Individual Counseling, Men’s Issues, Women’s Issues|

Most of us have heard about anxiety or panic attacks and believe we know exactly what they mean. However, if you have never experienced those symptoms, you might be surprised and realize how little we know. I’m sure no one alive four years ago will ever forget where they were, what they did, who they were with, or how they felt when the world was rocked to the core by the catastrophic COVID-19 pandemic. To be honest, many of us initially ignored those first reports, alerts, and warnings, chalking them off to media gimmicks and overdramatization. Valencia Christian Counseling offers support for those still processing the emotional and mental impact of this life-altering event. Remember, none of us had experienced a pandemic before in our lifetime, so the concept was rather foreign to us. Seemingly overnight, we all realized that we knew someone who was sick, hospitalized, had lost someone, or had lost their lives. Millions of people experienced anxiety or panic attacks, much to their surprise. Fact 1: Even the strongest can have anxiety or panic attacks As dreadful as the situation can be, many can convince themselves that they are the strong ones emotionally, invulnerable to attack. Even while helping others, organizing things for the community, or being the face of strength and reliability, people can still have a panic attack. One such woman reports being a community leader and being taken by surprise by a panic attack. She reports the memories of the day are still crystal clear in her mind. She remembers waking up feeling like she had fallen into moving water with a strange, wave-like feeling. She kept getting intense chest pains that would grip her suddenly and subside within a few minutes. She was shaking and sweating profusely. Her heart was racing and [...]

Anxiety

CONTACT INFO

Valencia Christian Counseling

ABOUT US