1. Anxiety Symptoms: Fight or Flight - a range of evolutionarily advantageous physical changes common to mammals - helpful for dealing with acute threat (e.g. car screeching toward us) - brain struggles to differentiate between imagined threat and ‘objective’ threat.

2. Medically Unexplained Symptoms (Functional Symptoms)
Umbrella term for several diagnoses with a neurological basis (e.g. non-epileptic attach disorder, chronic pain, dissociative symptoms)
Because there is no ‘damage’ to the nervous system, routine medical investigations (e.g. scans, blood tests) produce no definitive indications.
Not “all in the mind” but as yet poorly understood by medical science. Evidence suggests problems in brain sending and receiving neuronal information – i.e. a problem with the function of the nervous system.
Like having software problem on a computer, rather than a hardware problem.
Can often be treated and/or managed effectively with multi-disciplinary approaches (usually Med/Psych/Physio/OT) but require a concerted effort from everyone (patient themselves, family, school, work etc).
Biopsychosocial approach to make sense of predisposing, precipitating and perpetuating factors. Understanding is key.

3. Understanding symptoms
Biological
Psychological
Social
Predisposing
Genetic factors / Structural Disease
Personality Traits
Depression / Anxiety
Adverse experiences
Precipitating
Physical injury / illness Acute dissociation
Concern / attention about bodily symptoms
Stressful life events
Perpetuating
Changes in nervous system function
Subtle neuroendocrine changes
Worry about cause
Avoidance of symptom provocation
Anger
Frustration
Depression
Not being believed / Stigma of an ‘undiagnosed’ illness / Loss of job/independent income

4. Cognitive-Behavioural Understandings