Understanding Anxiety
Anxiety is the body’s way to respond to danger. We are programmed to experience an “alarm” if we feel that we are in danger, being placed under pressure, or in stressful situations. Our “alarm” thresh-hold is different for every person. For some, the alarm sounds when we meet a new person; for others, (some police officers, for example) it doesn’t sound until they are face-to-face with an armed suspect.
The “alarm” or the feeling of anxiety or “anxiousness”, isn’t a necessarily bad feeling to have. Anxiety helps you to be alert and aware; can cause you to take action; or encourage you to enact a solution to solve the problems that are troubling you.
When that anxiety (or anxiousness or nervousness) is “always on”, or it begins to interfere with your life activities and relationships, we need to determine what has caused us to cross over from normal anxiety to the realm of anxiety disorders.
What are your symptoms and do they indicate an anxiety disorder?
If you continue to experience some of these indicators or symptoms, and they do not seem to go away, it is possible that you are suffering from an anxiety disorder.
- Are you always or often tense, worried, or “on edge”?
- Are you overcome by fear that you know is irrational, but can’t stop the fear?
- Is your feeling of anxiety interfering with your work, school, or family responsibilities?
- Do you find ways to avoid everyday situations or activities because they cause you feelings of anxiety?
- Do you often feel that you must complete tasks a certain way or bad things will happen?
- Are you intensely critical of how others around you complete certain tasks, to the point of you feeling that you must complete the task for it to be correct?
- Do you experience uncontrollable attacks of heart-stimulating panic (fast heart beat, breathing fast, “out of control” feeling)?
- Are you worried that around every corner you will find danger or catastrophe?
