A Guide To What Anxiety Is

The answer to the question, what is anxiety, is certainly not definitive and concrete. The tendency for anxiety in our present society is growing, as we are confronted by more problems and stress every day, as the pace of life is dramatically faster than it had been even some decades ago. So, what is anxiety?

On a basic level, anxiety is a feeling of unease, fear, apprehension, worry, but for example while fear is a concrete and usually short-term negative feeling in face of some direct danger, anxiety is mostly long-term and much more abstract and thus, frightening. Mild anxiety is unsettling and unpleasant, however there are also some serious cases of severe anxiety, where anxiety can temporarily or even permanently interfere with one’s quality of life.

What is Anxiety? Know the Symptoms

Anxiety, as a physiological state may be characterized as being composed of a variety of physical and emotional symptoms. Anxiety is mostly accompanied by physical sensations, such as palpitations, irregular or faster heart beats, chest pains, headaches, feeling sick, dry mouth , or sweating for example as a result of the increased heart rate and blood pressure.

In terms of psychological or emotional symptoms, anxiety may be characterized by a mostly abstract feeling of danger, an usual feeling of unease or fear, irritability, detachment, inability to sleep properly and thus a feeling of almost permanent fatigue. Not all of these symptoms will characterize all cases of anxiety, however they are all fairly frequent in mild or severe cases of anxiety.

Some Types of Anxiety

So what behavioral pattern is anxiety? Anxiety exists in various forms in our current society. People suffering from GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) for example might feel their thoughts racing all the time, worrying about problems, feeling restless and concerned about different things. This excessive worrying can be regarded as one kind of anxiety.

Many people may have test anxiety, research shows for example that almost 50% of students feel test anxiety to a milder or more severe extent. Test anxiety is characterized by an excessively anxious and restless state of mind before tests, or in face of some tasks set in the professional life.

Students suffering from this type of anxiety may feel the loss of control, the test results being associated with personal worth or certain fears in connection with the teachers or parents. Physical symptoms can be sweating, nausea, or increased heartbeat. Certain phobias, as for example agoraphobias, or excessive fear of spiders, heights or strangers may also be regarded as anxieties.

As it can be seen, it is quite hard to determine, exactly what anxiety is, although the symptoms that accompany it are usually quite similar, it exists in various forms in our present culture. People, wanting to cope with it should try to slow down their lives, generally, not to have so much stress, or should seek out professional help in case of severe anxieties.