The dictionary define anxiety as: a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome.
Anxiety is not just excessive worry.
Anxiety is a disorder of the emotion of fear. Having anxiety means experiencing a disorder that manifests in so many ways and is a quite different experience for every person.
Being anxious means having an internal cycle of thoughts causing fear, fear causing thoughts dominating your life.
The meaning of anxiety is different to every sufferer.
Humans are all created to the same blueprint but how they respond to conditions and to the world around them is very different in every case.
Whilst one person might experience high level anxiety with panic, phobias, obsessions, compulsions and low mood, another may only experience mild anxiety, shyness or issues when making speeches for example.
Children and adults experience anxiety differently. Children commonly respond with separation issues, school-phobia and obsessive thoughts whereas adults more commonly experience regular panic attacks, health anxiety and OCD.
Anxiety manifests in many ways
It is a massive misapprehension that anxiety is just like fear. Anxiety disorders are far reaching and varied.
Obsessions, panic, compulsions and phobias
Sufferers can experience any or all of the above constantly or repeatedly over time. They are indiscriminate, meaning that no one can predict what they will experience or when it will happen; this is why people become so isolated and scared.
Applying logic to the experience of anxiety sufferers is almost impossible; who becomes phobic, obsessive, panicky or generally anxious is not a matter of weakness or vulnerability, it is a matter only of chance.
Physical symptoms
Palpitations, chest pain and racing heart
Breathing issues, smothering sensations
Dizziness, dreaminess, feeling faint
Ringing in ears, disturbed vision
Tingling sensations, numbness, shaking
Weak legs, heavy arms, pain in limbs
Neck and back pain
Digestive issues, IBS, indigestion
Frequency to urinate or defecate
Choking sensations, lump in throat
Dry mouth
Psychological symptoms
Obsessions
Phobias
Disturbing thoughts
Depersonalisation/Derealisation
HOCD, POCD, ROCD
Aggression
Low mood
Health anxiety
Sel-harm
Eating disorders
Sexual or aggressive thoughts
It could be said that anxiety isn't real. Anxiety isn't fear, it's false fear but anxiety sufferers would argue that the symptom are very real and that it is therefore a real disorder.
Whilst an anxiety disorder is real, the perceived threat is not real. Anxiety disorders produce many high level physical symptoms but they are based on false and not real fear.
People with the anxiety disorder commonly called OCD limit their anxiety by completing compulsions like hand-washing. They say that the repetitive nature of the compulsions removes much of the anxiety they experience.
Anxiety causes OCD in the same way as it causes agoraphobia, panic disorder or other anxiety disorders, by driving 'what if' thoughts.
Like I said, anxiety is a disorder and disorders can be removed. Anxiety disorders require that they are reversed in order to regain emotional balance.
The mind has the natural ability to reset emotional balance. Think about this logically, every day of your life, your mind adjusts emotional responses in response to the world and people around you. Every human has the ability to become scared and return to calm, to become happy and return to neutral, to become angry and then relax... it's the way the body and mind work to maintain balance.
That being the case, regaining an anxiety free life is very simple indeed and it is what we have been showing people since 1997.
We can show you how to quickly return to emotional equilibrium and wake every day looking forward to the opportunities that await you