What is Anxiety
Fear, stress and anxiety have become an almost normal part of life in our world today. Anxiety affects millions of people each year. Anxiety starts with stress and fear and grows into anxiety. Stress and fear are both reactions to perceived danger. This reaction causes us our central nervous system to react in preparation for fleeing. This is known as the ‘fight or flight response’. While this reaction served us well when we were cavemen, in today’s society we don’t need such drastic reactions.
Our physical response to stress and fear is the start of anxiety. These include heart racing, sweating and hyperventilation. Anxiety that continues over a long period of time or is severe is called generalized anxiety. There are also other types of anxiety. These include panic, posttraumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and social anxiety. These all have one thing in common – there is fear involved.
Generalized anxiety is the most common type of anxiety disorder and has many possible symptoms. Some of the symptoms overlap with other disorders such as depression. People with generalized anxiety are often keyed up and find it hard to stay calm. They may tire easily yet have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. They may have trouble concentrating.
Often they worry or obsess about something that might happen. They may have muscle tension and are often irritable. Worry is the biggest symptom of anxiety. Everyone worries, but those who let worry take over their lives may suffer from anxiety.
Panic disorder is extreme anxiety, this is to be considered when looking into what is anxiety. It often shows itself as panic attacks. A high level of anxiety and fear often precedes the panic attack. Once you suffer from a panic attack you may actually have other panic attacks from the fear of having one. In other words, your fear feeds on itself to the point that you may not even realize what triggered the first panic attack. People are often so afraid of having another panic attack that they avoid doing whatever they were doing when the panic attack occurred, even though that was not the trigger.
Social anxiety is a common type of anxiety. It is characterized by a fear of being with people, having to speak in front of people or avoiding situations where you need to talk to people. These fears may stem from low self-esteem issues where you don’t feel you are able to contribute to the conversation. These fears often go back to childhood issues where body image or bullying took place.
Other, less common forms of anxiety are posttraumatic stress disorder (PSD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Both of these are deep-rooted anxieties that have taken years to develop. PSD is associated with a specific traumatic event that happened in the past. At times the person may re-live the trauma when something triggers it. OCD develops over time and may have started in childhood.
Hopefully this article has gone some why to answering the question ‘what is anxiety’? Anxiety can range from mild to severe. Mild cases of anxiety can often be dealt with independently while more acute forms may require the help of a medical professional.
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