Anxiety is a multifaceted and widespread mental health issue impacting millions globally. It manifests in various ways, with many individuals feeling that anxiety can be overwhelming and disrupt day-to-day activities.

How can you identify if anxiety is problematic? Additionally, what are the underlying causes of anxiety? Here’s everything you need to know.

What is anxiety?

Essentially, anxiety is an emotional state characterized by nervousness, often coupled with negative thoughts and physical symptoms. While it may center around specific upcoming events or challenges, it can also evolve into a more generalized anxiety about the future.

Breaking it down further, anxiety involves thoughts, emotions, and actions. For instance, if you joke about yourself during a meeting, it might lead to feelings of nausea, causing you to skip the meeting altogether. This decision, while it may provide temporary relief, can exacerbate anxiety in the long run, creating a cycle of avoidance.

What causes anxiety?

Anxiety often begins with negative anticipatory thoughts. For example, you might worry that an upcoming exam will be too challenging, leading to failure, or that something might go wrong during a flight. These thoughts can trigger a fear response in your brain, releasing hormones that activate your sympathetic nervous system, particularly adrenaline, preparing your body to either confront or escape a perceived threat.

In genuinely dangerous situations, this response can be life-saving. However, unhealthy anxiety may result in false alarms, prompting your body to react vigorously despite the absence of real danger.

Other factors contributing to anxiety can include past traumatic experiences, certain medications that provoke fearful thoughts, or medical conditions like hyperthyroidism that disrupt hormones related to fear.

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What does it feel like?

Anxiety can manifest physically, leading to discomfort through symptoms like a racing heart, sweaty palms, dizziness, trembling, stomach issues, and nausea.

Individuals with chronic anxiety may find these physical sensations particularly troubling, further intensifying their anxiety. For example, someone anxious about public speaking may feel their hands shake or their stomach flutter, compounding their stress.

Mentally, anxiety often triggers a cascade of fearful thoughts and incessant worries. Coupled with physical symptoms, this situation can lead to a strong desire to flee or avoid anxiety-inducing scenarios, making avoidance appear appealing despite it being counterproductive over time.

When does anxiety become a problem?

Experiencing anxiety occasionally is entirely normal. In fact, moderate levels of anxiety can be beneficial (as boxing coach Cus d’Amato once noted, anxiety is like fire: it can be destructive, but when controlled, it’s a valuable resource for warmth and cooking).

For instance, moderate anxiety about a job interview can motivate adequate preparation, which is preferable to arriving unprepared. Similarly, a mild anxiety boost during the interview may help you think more clearly.

Anxiety becomes problematic when it spirals out of control (e.g., being so anxious during exams that you can’t focus) or becomes chronic and overwhelming.

A significant warning sign is when anxiety leads to avoidance behavior. For example, avoiding travel due to fear of flying can narrow your life experience and lead to feelings of unhappiness, denying you the chance to learn how to manage worry-inducing situations.

Avoidance may also manifest as reliance on ineffective coping strategies that only mask anxiety in the short term while exacerbating it over time. In contrast, confronting anxiety can be daunting initially but may be the better path toward long-term relief.

Is anxiety a mental disorder?

If a person experiences significant anxiety for many days over a period of more than six months across various situations, they may be diagnosed with “generalized anxiety disorder.”

There are also specific anxiety disorders. For example, someone with intense anxiety tied to social situations may be diagnosed with “social anxiety disorder,” while frequent panic attack concerns may lead to a diagnosis of “panic disorder.”

Specific phobias, such as agoraphobia (fear of situations where escape might be difficult), are recognized as forms of anxiety disorders. Other conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) were formerly categorized as anxiety disorders, but psychiatrists now classify them distinctly, despite their anxiety connections.

In PTSD, traumatized individuals often remain in hyper-alert states, perpetually poised for a fight or flight response. In OCD, individuals may resort to compulsive behaviors as ineffective attempts to mitigate feelings of anxiety.

Are some people more prone to anxiety than others?

Genetics and life experiences jointly shape our personality traits, which can influence susceptibility to anxiety. Particularly, individuals scoring high in neuroticism tend to experience frequent mood swings and negative emotions like shame and guilt, increasing their worry.

Conversely, those who exhibit higher levels of trust and lower stress levels in interpersonal relationships are often less susceptible to anxiety. Additionally, evidence suggests that extroverted individuals have a lower likelihood of developing anxiety, especially in social scenarios.

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