15 Essential Facts About Anxiety

These are the Symptoms of Anxiety by Jayberries – Wikimedia Commons

15 Essential Facts About Anxiety

Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different from fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat whereas the latter is defined as the emotional response to a real threat. It is often accompanied by nervous behavior such as pacing back and forth, somatic complaints, and rumination.

Anxiety is a feeling of uneasiness and worry, usually generalized and unfocused as an overreaction to a situation that is only subjectively seen as menacing. It is often accompanied by muscular tension, restlessness, fatigue, inability to catch one’s breath, tightness in the abdominal region, nausea, and problems in concentration.

Here are 15 Essential Facts About Anxiety.

1. Anxiety is different from but closely related to Fear

Fear is a response to a real or perceived immediate threat in terms of a fight or flight response; anxiety involves the expectation of future threats including dread. People facing anxiety may withdraw from situations which have provoked anxiety in the past.

Fear is short-lived, present-focused, geared towards a specific threat, and facilitating escape from threat. On the other hand, anxiety is long-acting, future-focused, broadly focused towards a diffuse threat, and promotes excessive caution while approaching a potential threat and interferes with constructive coping.

2. Anxiety disorders are among the most persistent mental problems in the world

Diagram showing James-Lange theory of emotion with anxiety – Wikimedia Commons

The emotion of anxiety can persist beyond the developmentally appropriate time periods in response to specific events, thus turning into one of the multiple anxiety disorders, for example, generalized anxiety disorder, and panic disorder. 

The difference between anxiety disorder, as a mental disorder and anxiety, as normal emotion, is that people with an anxiety disorder experience anxiety most days during approximately 6 months, or even during shorter time periods in children. Anxiety disorders are among the most persistent mental problems and often last decades. Besides, strong percepts of anxiety exist within other mental disorders. Read more on 15 Famous People who had Mental Health Issues. 

3. Anxiety is related to the specific behaviors of fight-or-flight responses

The fight-or-flight or the fight-flight-or-freeze-fawn response also called hyperarousal or the acute stress response is a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival.

It was first described by Walter Bradford Cannon. His theory states that animals react to threats with a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system, preparing the animal for fighting or fleeing. The same theory is exhibited in human behaviors associated with anxiety.

4. Anxiety exhibits symptoms that reduce the quality of life

Covid-19 mental health impact in the United States by Statista / Huffington Post – Wikimedia Commons

Anxiety is experienced in short spurts with sporadic, stressful panic attacks, known as acute anxiety. Symptoms of anxiety can range in number, intensity, and frequency, depending on the person. 

While almost everyone has experienced anxiety at some point in their life, most people do not develop long-term problems with anxiety. Anxiety can be experienced with long, drawn-out daily symptoms that reduce the quality of life, known as chronic anxiety.

5. Anxiety can induce depression 

Anxiety can induce several psychological pains like depression or mental disorders and may lead to self-harm or suicide. Depression is a mental state of low mood and aversion to activity. Classified medically as a mental and behavioral disorder, the experience of depression affects a person’s thoughts, behavior, motivation, feelings, and sense of well-being.  

The emotional effects of anxiety may include feelings of apprehension or dread, trouble concentrating, feeling tense or jumpy, anticipating the worst, irritability, restlessness, watching and waiting for signs and occurrences of danger, and, feeling like your mind’s gone blank as well as nightmares, bad dreams, obsessions about sensations, déjà vu, a trapped-in-your-mind feeling, and feeling like everything is scary. It may include a vague experience and a feeling of helplessness. Read more in this article about demystifying depression.

6. The cognitive effects of anxiety include intrusive thoughts such as fear of dying

Alternatives to Self Harm by MissLunaRose12 – Wikimedia Commons

You may fear that the chest pains are a deadly heart attack or that the shooting pains in your head are the result of a tumor or an aneurysm. You feel an intense fear when you think of dying, or you may think of it more often than normal, or can’t get it out of your mind.

The physiological symptoms of anxiety may include, Neurological, such as headache, paresthesias, fasciculations, vertigo, or presyncope, and Respiratory, such as shortness of breath or sighing breathing. Digestive, such as abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhoea, indigestion, dry mouth, or bolus. Stress hormones released in an anxious state have an impact on bowel function and can manifest physical symptoms that may contribute to or exacerbate IBS.

7. Social Anxiety is a common type of Anxiety for most people

Social anxiety is the anxiety and fear specifically linked to being in social settings i.e., interacting with others. Some categories of disorders associated with social anxiety include anxiety disorders, mood disorders, autism spectrum disorders, eating disorders, and substance use disorders.

Social anxiety varies in degree and severity. For some people, it is characterized by experiencing discomfort or awkwardness during physical social contact, for example when embracing, or shaking hands, while in other cases it can lead to a fear of interacting with unfamiliar people altogether. Those with this condition may restrict their lifestyles to accommodate the anxiety, minimizing social interaction whenever possible. 

8. Personality is also a trait leading to anxiety and depression and its persistence

Title page of W. H. Auden, The Age of Anxiety, 1947 by Macspaunday – Wikimedia Commons

Anxiety can be either a short-term state or a long-term personality trait. Trait anxiety reflects a stable tendency across the lifespan of responding with acute, state anxiety in the anticipation of threatening situations.

A meta-analysis showed that a high level of neuroticism is a risk factor for the development of anxiety symptoms and disorders. Such anxiety may be conscious or unconscious. Personality can also be a trait leading to anxiety and depression and persistence. Through experience, many find it difficult to collect themselves due to their own personal nature.

9. Panic disorder is an anxiety disorder that occurs without any triggers

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, this disorder can be distinguished by unexpected and repeated episodes of intense fear. Someone with panic disorder will eventually develop constant fear of another attack and as this progresses it will begin to affect daily functioning and an individual’s general quality of life. 

Some symptoms include difficulty breathing, chest pain, dizziness, trembling or shaking, feeling faint, nausea, and fear that you are losing control or are about to die. Even though they have these symptoms during an attack, the main symptom is the persistent fear of having future panic attacks.

10. Anxiety disorders are a group of mental disorders characterized by exaggerated feelings of anxiety 

Schematic describing Anxiety by Kaolincash – Wikimedia Commons

There are a number of anxiety disorders: including generalized anxiety disorder, specific phobia, social anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, panic disorder, and selective mutism. The disorder differs by what results in the symptoms. People often have more than one anxiety disorder.

Generalized anxiety disorder is a mental and behavioural disorder, specifically an anxiety disorder characterized by excessive, uncontrollable and often irrational worry about events or activities. Separation anxiety disorder is an anxiety disorder in which an individual experiences excessive anxiety regarding separation from home or from people to whom the individual has a strong emotional attachment.

11. Anxiety disorders are caused by a complex combination of genetic and environmental factors

Anxiety disorders are partly genetic, with twin studies suggesting 30-40% genetic influence on individual differences in anxiety. Environmental factors are also important. Twin studies show that individual-specific environments have a large influence on anxiety, whereas shared environmental influences operate during childhood but decline through adolescence.

Specific measured environments that have been associated with anxiety include child abuse, family history of mental health disorders, and poverty. Anxiety is also associated with drug use, including alcohol, caffeine, and benzodiazepines, which are often prescribed to treat anxiety.

12. Anxiety has a range of treatments

Anxiety help by Nyfeeah – Wikimedia Commons

The first step in the management of a person with anxiety symptoms involves evaluating the possible presence of an underlying medical cause, the recognition of which is essential in order to decide the correct treatment. Anxiety symptoms may mask an organic disease, or appear associated with or as a result of a medical disorder.

Treatment may include lifestyle changes, counselling, and medications. Counselling is typical with a type of cognitive behavioural therapy. Medications, such as antidepressants or beta blockers, may improve symptoms.

13. Anxiety disorders often occur with other personality disorders

Anxiety disorders often occur with other mental health disorders, particularly major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, or certain personality disorders. 

It also commonly occurs with personality traits such as neuroticism. This observed co-occurrence is partly due to genetic and environmental influences shared between these traits and anxiety. Read more on the Top 10 Most Famous People with Anxiety Disorders. 

14. Many medical conditions can cause anxiety

Anxiety cloud by John Hain – Wikimedia Commons

This includes conditions that affect the ability to breathe, like COPD and asthma, and the difficulty in breathing that often occurs near death. Conditions that cause abdominal pain or chest pain can cause anxiety and may in some cases be a somatization of anxiety, the same is true for some sexual dysfunctions. Life-threatening conditions like cancer can also cause anxiety.

Conditions that affect the face or the skin can cause social anxiety, especially among adolescents, and developmental disabilities often lead to social anxiety for children as well. 

15. Social risk factors for anxiety include a history of trauma

These factors include physical, sexual or emotional abuse or assault, bullying, early life experiences and parenting factors for example, rejection, lack of warmth, high hostility, harsh discipline, high parental negative affect, anxious childrearing, modelling of dysfunctional and drug-abusing behavior, discouragement of emotions, poor socialization, poor attachment, and child abuse and neglect, cultural factors such as stoic families/cultures, persecuted minorities including those with disabilities, and socioeconomics such as uneducated, unemployed, impoverished although developed countries have higher rates of anxiety disorders than developing countries.