Anxiety is felt in the body, the mind and the emotions. Anxiety is both physiological and psychological. Our thoughts, physical body, emotions and behavior are all affected.
Taken all together, anxiety feels unpleasant. It is often called worry, uneasiness, fear, dread, being uptight, stress or apprehension..
Because anxiety has such a broad reach, its called a generalized mood disorder.
It may seem strange, but the person experiencing anxiety may not know the anxiety cause. The anxiety trigger is not always clear.
Fear and anxiety are different because when we are experiencing fear, the danger is present and known. With anxiety, we often feel an amorphous sense of powerlessness, or that the treat is unavoidable.
Fear, conversely, instead, is obvious – we can see or hear it. And when fear is felt, we react by either fighting, fleeing or freezing.
Fear also distinguishes itself from anxiety by being about something in the present. The anxiety cause is felt about things that we imagine in the future.
Compared to our ancestors, we are bombarded with causes for anxiety in today’s world!
Although we consider anxiety to be a normal reaction to stress, the longterm effects of chronic anxiety can be damaging to our health and overall well-being.
A panic attack is a heightened sense of anxiety that comes on suddenly.
There are some typical reactions to anxiety, including headaches, digestive disturbance, shortness of breath, exhaustion, irregular heartbeat, tight muscles. Your body is preparing to protect you from the danger, so it does various things to get you ready to escape or defend yourself.
Your heart rate is increased, you begin to sweat, and instead of serving your digestion and immune system, your blood is supplies to your large muscles.
In addition to the physiological effects of anxiety, thoughts and emotions change. Thoughts and emotions turn to looking for danger signs, imagining the worst, feeling jumpy and irritable, dreading the future and difficulty concentrating. You may feel as if people and situations are threatening and dangerous. Thinking the same thing over and over is common. With anxiety, fear of dying is possible. Often when people are anxious, someone may interpret the physical symptoms as proof that they have a terminal disease.
