Anxiety Part 1: What is Anxiety?

Table of Contents

• Part 1: What is Anxiety? (you are here)
• [WIP] Part 2: How it works? TODO
• To Be Defined

I'll try to update and include this in every part of this serie for easier browsing

Introduction

First, a small disclaimer: I'm not a psychologist, and do not have any
medical background, I'm just a geek with a mind for understanding things who
lives with his wife who happens to have a pretty harsh case of anxiety
disorder. I did quite a lot of research on anxiety and other more or less
related affections, and want to share my findings in hope it can bring some
help to people dealing with anxiety, but also for people trying to help out a
loved one facing it.

Second, a small clarification: In these posts, I'll talk about people having
a real disorder. People with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Chronic
Anxiety and recurrent phobias that leads anxiety being a part of their daily
life. It is fairly different from being stressed for an interview, an important
meeting, or other stress inducing situation. I'm by no mean saying this isn't a
problem if you're actually going through that, but it isn't a pathology if it is
really stressful event related and not recurrent.

So now, let's get started.

Anxiety is an awful thing to live with, and dealing with it, or helping people
facing it is NOT straightforward. Why, would you ask? Because most of the
thing that seems obvious, logic, rational and natural in normal situations won't
apply here. If you're not the one facing it yourself, and are just wanting to
understand and help someone, it may be hard to grasp, tiresome and frustrating.
But if you really care for that person you will have to get that deeply engraved
into your brain, and very likely have to remind it to yourself regularly.

Dealing with it is not easy or simple, and unfortunately, not an exact science.
Each individual is different, we all have our own mind, our own fears, and each
case will come from different sources and some methods to help out won't work on
some person. It is a trial and error process, the only thing we can do is our
best.

If you're one dealing with anxiety, stay strong, believe in yourself, and you'll
have to commit, to commit hard. You probably know it better than anyone else,
but most people suffering from anxiety won't handle well the fact to be pushed
or forced to do something, so if you want to do something about it, you have to
want it yourself, and to stick it! And yes, you can and will do it.

All that being said, let's try to get to what anxiety is, I guess it will mostly
be useful for people searching help for people they know, more than for people
suffering from it, but who knows, it may shed a new light on it even for people
facing it themselves.

NOTE: Sorry, I tend to switch quite often from you to him/her/them as
the perspective I write in sometimes directs more toward people dealing with
anxiety themselves and sometimes more for the close friends and family. Sorry
about that, I hope it won't be too annoying to read.

What it is, and what it is not

Here I'll try to brush some fat lines around it to get a first idea of what it
is. This apply to people really suffering from real anxiety, not just a single
stressful event that got someone uneasy. We're talking chronic uncontrollable
anxiety here.

I'll list the points here and develop them a bit more below if need be.

• It is:

  • A illness
  • A distorted perception
  • Powerless
  • A real issue
  • A habit
  • A lack of confidence
  • An invisible jail
  • Self nourishing

• It is not:

  • Dangerous
  • Just some stress
  • A way to get attention

• It can:

  • Cause some physical symptoms

It is: A illness

It is a real pathology, which shouldn't be taken lightly. It is from the way
someone is thinking, sure, but it doesn't mean it is any less real. No, they are
not doing that on purpose, the way they think may sound weird because
irrational, but it is just the anxiety taking over.

It is: A distorted perception

Most of anxiety is just a disproportionate reaction to a stimulus. Unfortunately
logic analysis is generally out as soon as anxiety kicks in (I'll talk more
about that later), otherwise, a simple analysis of how often the thing
triggering the anxiety has actually been a real issue would show that there's no
reason to put oneself through such a hard time for that.

It is: Powerless

Not to mean it has no impact on you, and that it is weak in the way it affects
you. No, what I mean is that it has no effect, at all, in NO cases on the
output of a given situation. You can worry as much as you want, as hard as you
want, for as long as you want: it won't have any resulting effect on what cause
the anxiety itself. The only thing it can actually do, is if you stress enough
and that it is something you can skip/avoid, you'll avoid it. I'll talk more
about avoidance later on, but the worst about it, is that your mind will think
it actually helped you, which it really didn't, quite the opposite actually.
Again, I'll talk more about that later.

It is: A real issue

When I say it is powerless in last point, I don't mean to reduce the importance
of anxiety. Not at all, it indeed is a real problem.

The mechanisms will talk more about the way it acts, but basically it means
you're acting like you're life is threatened for things that are not that
dangerous. Now to reuse something I read online, imagine you have a smoke alarm
that's overly sensitive, and that goes off every time you cook... That's
annoying and not helping. Worse, as in The boy who cried wolf it can actually
lessen your or your family ability to react in case of a real danger
misinterpreting it as a symptom of anxiety, it can even mislead some doctors (it
happened to my wife).

It is: A habit

Or can become one at least. You can end up being used to being anxious and
actually not know how to function when nothing is worrying you, which can lead
to some empty anxiety about the fact that you don't know what to do or how to
behave. Also, avoidance can, and will likely, become a habit very quickly. Once
again. more on this later.

It is: An invisible jail

People from the outside who aren't aware of your situation, or are not willing
to make any effort to understand you will just ask things like: "Why don't you
just do ..." or "You should go to ...". They have absolutely no grasp whatsoever
of how hard things can be for you. You're trapped by your mind. It prevents you
from doing things, and the more anxiety settles, the worst it gets, up to the
point of not living your place at all, except when you have no other choices.
Which leads us to the next point.

It is: A lack of confidence

Maybe not for everyone, but for a lot of people suffering from anxiety it tends
to be related to a lack of confidence, in yourself, your body, or other
people that you need to rely on. Most of the time? All these, and maybe more!

You end up thinking either you don't have the skills to achieve something, or
that your body will betray you in the middle of what you need to do.

As explained in the distorted perception point, if you think about it
rationally, not when anxiety is already there, you'll know that there is barely
any chances that actually happens.

It is: Self nourishing

By various mechanisms in the brain, anxiety will reinforce itself, that's why I
said in the intro you have to commit hard, because the way the brain works will
likely tends to drag you deeper and deeper.

One thing is that you'll end up (if you're reading this, it probably already is
the case) fearing the panic attacks and the anxiety itself way more than the
actual situations.

Second thing is that avoidance will give you a false sense of having managed not
to have a panic attack or anxiety crisis, and make your brain think it was the
smart decision, which it was not... I'm skipping ahead on avoidance again.

It is not: Dangerous

It does feel awful, and make you feel like you're sick, or something wrong with
your body and health, but anxiety isn't harmful to you.

It is not: Just some stress

As I already kinda stated it by making a difference with stress and anxiety as a
pathology: anxiety is not just some stress, or having a bad day... It is feeling
worried about your dear life about every minute you're awake.

For people not facing anxiety and actually thinking it is nothing: take the day
you were the most worried of your life, imagine that happening about every day,
and not being able simply distract yourself to stop worrying, that's about
what life for people suffering from GAD is like. So it may not be logical
and seems stupid to you, don't underestimate them, they are facing something
you would likely not be able to cope with for a whole week.

It is not: A way to get attention

Again, this is not done on purpose, nobody feels like cramping all day long in
fear they're about to die, see first point: it is a real illness!

It can: Create real physical symptoms

Even if it isn't harmful for you, anxiety can create some real physical symptoms
that, for an anxious person who will likely tend to be hypochondriac will likely
adds up some more anxiety.

Here is a small list of things that Anxiety and/or the panic attacks can create:

• Eczema, rashes
• Stomach ache, burn, or acidity
• With high level of acidity in the stomach can burn/hurt the throat too
• Vertigo
• Vomiting (especially intense panic attack)
• Vision impairment: dots, shrink of field of view...
• After a panic attack, you'll likely get cramps, sore in various part of the
  body, shaking

That's a non exhaustive list, just a few of the things that went through my
mind, hoping that it can comfort your end remind you next time that, it was just
a cause of the anxiety, not a symptom of some other illness.

Conclusion

I initially wanted to put the next part together with that, but I ended up
writing so much I stopped here for things to be easier to digest.

I hope this part brings a bit more understanding about it.

Coming up next: How it works.