Posted 4/29/2014 2:10 PM (GMT 0)
Crossbow,
Anxiety affects our whole
being. It affects how we feel, how we behave and has very real physical
symptoms.
It feels a bit like fear but whereas we know what we are frightened of, we
often don't know what we are anxious about .
The first thing to understand is that anxiety itself
is self-sustaining. It causes problems with your mind and body that make it
more likely to experience further anxiety. For example, anxiety changes brain
chemistry in a way that creates negative thinking - negative thinking reduces
the ability to think positively, which in turn makes it harder to control
anxiety.
Anxiety also creates physical symptoms that cause
their own anxiety - symptoms that are so severe that they perfectly mimic what
it's like to live with some of the world's most serious diseases. Anxiety also
creates hypersensitivity, which is a mental response that makes people more
prone to noticing those physical symptoms and letting it affect them.
If anxiety were just nervousness and sweating,
anxiety disorders may not be considered as serious. But anxiety is so much more
than that, and the longer you live with anxiety the more symptoms you can
experience.
Anxiety can also cause people to fear the anxiety
itself, which unfortunately bleeds into other areas of their life. One of the
more interesting aspects of anxiety is that when you're nervous about one thing
(for example, social situations) you can become nervous about other things as a
result (for example, amusement park rides). This is how anxiety works.
So when someone starts to fear their own anxiety and
its symptoms, they may also develop new anxieties, or find more situations
causing anxiety. Depression and anxiety go hand in hand.