Blog

Understanding anxiety

Physical and emotional health

11 March 2025

Dr Hazel Douglas MBE

Feelings of anxiety, worry or stress are common. At some point, everyone will experience these feelings to some degree – although the stressors may be different. Dr Hazel Douglas MBE, Clinical Psychologist and Child Psychotherapist, shares her insights on anxiety. She suggests how adults and parents can support themselves, as well as equipping their children with the life skills, to manage anxious feelings in a healthy way.

Why anxiety isn't always a bad thing

Do you feel anxious sometimes? Well, that’s good because being anxious is being human. As human beings, we have lots of different feelings, anger, sadness, love, joy and anxiety. Being anxious has been with us for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s given us an edge. Now, sometimes when it’s too much, it’s not helpful, but anxiety can often be our friend. Anxiety can help us feel more alert. So, if you’re going into an exam, it’s often helpful to feel a bit anxious. Not too much, but a bit anxious.

Getting in the 'zone'

If you’ve sometimes felt that being anxious has been helpful, well, sports people would call that the ‘Zone of Optimal Functioning’. The Zone of Optimal Functioning is the sweet spot. Above that, you’re too anxious – it’ll affect your performance. Below that, if you’re not anxious enough – it will also affect your performance, which is why being a little bit anxious at exam time can be very helpful. And over the hundreds of thousands of years that we’ve been humans; anxiety has been our friend. It’s given us the edge. It’s helped us to survive. But the trick is to be in that middle bit; the Zone of Optimal Functioning.

Skills to help you stay in the zone

If you’re feeling a bit too anxious, how do you come down into the zone? Well, you’ve got two nervous systems, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system. You want the parasympathetic system to work. And the way to get that into gear, in fact the quickest way to get it into gear, is to slow down your breathing. A simple exercise can be to count slowly in and count slowly out again. That is the quickest way to just calm yourself down. There’s lots of other ways to calm down your parasympathetic nervous system, for example you can use exercises that help you to focus on deliberately relaxing your muscles. But slow, deliberate breathing is the quickest. So, if you’re going into an exam and you feel that you’re too anxious, this can bring you down a bit, but remember, you do not want to be too calm.