What is anxiety? When, why and how people suffer from anxiety? Its negative & positive impacts

What is anxiety?

            Anxiety is a psychological disease found in humans of all ages. In anxiety, the quality of life suffers too much. Anxiety causes embarrassing thoughts, dread of panic attacks, fear of rejection & failure in any action or cause and other hallmarks of anxiety disorders. This intervenes with work, school, relationships, and activities as people isolate themselves from society, turn down opportunities, and forgo possible joys in life.

            People who suffer from anxiety may magnificently worry about minor routine problems for example:

(i) Incompletion of tasks assigned to them forgotten unintentionally or intentionally

          People suffering from anxiety may horribly worry and get upset due to incompletion of homework in school age, minor delay in completion of official task (on direction of boss), survey or any tiny casual work in ancestral lands or farm (on father or guardian’s routine directions), take fruits in fridge (on direction of mama or papa or elder one), and bring foods for family etc.

(ii) Negligence or Carelessness in Family or Social Behavior

          People suffering from anxiety may be extremely worried and get upset due to personal negligence or carelessness with family, friends, or other people in society for example Mr Faizan is a married man having 3 kids, and he often brings chocolates for his kids, but occasionally he failed to do so, he would become too worried about his personal carelessness in this regard and may deeply think and curse upon himself about the negligence and that would make him mode-off and stressful for hours, and resultantly he would not grace other family members and would not be able to behave gently and peacefully with spouse and other family members. There are so many other examples like Mr Hashim, a grandfather, who plays games with his grandchildren, but casually he fails to do so due to any reason like he was busy in watching cricket, hanging around with his old friends, and after that, he feels too much guilt and that makes him very stressful whole night. Mr Mohammad Ali intends to buy a gift for his wife Saima, but he fails and subsequently takes this issue to his peak and becomes anxious. Those who suffer from anxiety may be actors of the above actions (means they pass those mistakes of negligence or carelessness to others) or be victims of the above actions (means they receive those mistakes of negligence or carelessness from others) in both the situations of subject or object, the patient can suffer either he is passing the action or receiving. This means, Mr Faizan is normal with no anxiety problem, but one of his kids is suffering from this disease, the kid will react adversely and take this issue for a long time even for hours to days and months. Mr Hashim’s grandchild may not sleep for hours and not eat dinner because his grandfather did not play games with him today. And Mr Mohammad’s wife Sakina is a patient who did not receive her proposed gift from her husband irritates herself for a long period by overthinking deeply which disturbs her routine and feels a lot of pain mentally……

(ii)  Getup issues

          Those who are suffering from anxiety may badly worry about their personal getup even while they are walking on roads, streets or going on to normal routine such as office, walking-track, a friend’s shop just to have a cup of tea to get-together, prayer area and so on. They might think and raise a lot of questions on their own dressing like; how bad paint/shirt I am wearing, how old/disgusting shoes/sleepers I’ve worn today, what will the people be thinking about me to see my dirty dress, I’ll be looking too fool or poor in this getup, OMG I’m very weak person, I’m an idiot one. He may think and make ideas in mind for himself as, that person is staring at me! He must be thinking and passing comments on me, OMG! I think I’m overthinking, why you created me such a coward type person!; God! Why you sent me here, Oh no! Damn it, it’s me a fool. People with anxiety disorder often have low self-esteem. Feeling worthless can make the anxiety worse in many ways. It can trigger a passive style of interacting with others and foster a fear of being judged harshly. Low self-esteem may also be related to the impact of the anxiety disorder on your life. These problems may include:

Inferiority

Feelings of shame and guilt

Depressed mood

Difficulties in functioning at school, work or in social situations.

When why and how people get anxiety?

          There might be several reasons of people getting start suffering from anxiety. Here we would discuss major and common causes which are from my personal observation and research in the society & those include (1) Genetically Inherited Anxiety Disorders (2) Sudden Traumatic Incidents (3) Continuous mental torture via different ways.

       Genetically Inherited Anxiety Disorders

          Anxiety may genetically transfer from parents to children, from grandparents to grandchildren and from great-grandparents to great-grand children as per my personal research and observation. In this case, there is no certainty that which child or children among a couple or more number will get ancestral disease of anxiety via genetic transfer.  Maybe a father is an anxiety patient, and he has 5 kids, 3 daughters and two sons, first and sometimes last both children are at larger risk of getting genetic disease of anxiety. It is also possible that no child get anxiety genetically, but it might be transferred to grandchildren.

     Sudden Traumatic Incidents

            A person may start suffering from anxiety due to some sudden traumatic incidents like getting a car accident, falling down from building, cuts and burns etc. In some cases, people may get anxiety disorder due to sudden death of loved ones like parents, brother, sister, child or spouse & sometimes lover partner or a best friend.

      Continuous mental torture via different ways

            According to surveys, many of people fall ill in anxiety / depression due to continuous mental torture via different ways. If a person is continuously treated rudely by his superior in office, family-head at home, might suffer from anxiety. In such cases, victim might be tortured via many sources like elite person of the society, powerful officer of law & agencies or someone else who may mentally torture him, resultantly, victim would start suffering from this bad disease of anxiety / depression consequently. I found in my personal research and survey, that the continuous discrimination, social injustice and cruelty also cause anxiety in victims.

Negative or Positive impacts of anxiety

          Usually the different anxiety patients show different symptoms, causes and consequences that could be good or sometimes very bad.

   Negative impacts of anxiety

          Those suffering from chronic anxiety, become careless about performing their duties, jobs which harms their career and future opportunities. Anxiety patients avoid visiting doctors and taking medicine which worsen their health condition, which can drag them to serious problem and sometimes to death bead. A person suffering from chronic anxiety level would believe that his/her life is a curse! He / she is the most unlucky person of the world. The patient will obviously believe that their life has become worse. So it’s clear this type of patent can never be satisfied with his life until he gets rid out of this dreadful disease of anxiety. Anxiety patients destroy their family statues, relationship and friendship because of their wrong attitude and illusions. They are unpredictable and difficult to deal with, because they change their modes in moments, and they pass most of the time in illusions. They also do not maintain their sleep and diet, which drag them into depression. While talking about medical impacts, chronic anxiety can cause intense level of depression in the patients and that damages nervous system too. And people suffering may become too furious that they could commit social sins or in simple words they may become criminals or may commit mistake of attempting suicide.

        Positive impacts of anxiety

          Although there are some levels of anxiety wherein the beginning certain level of anxiety, patents remain cautious for doing irrelevant actions like visiting in dark streets alone, breathing fast in critical situations helps their heart work and relax brain just like an exercise. Those who suffer from certain low level of anxiety may treat their family, friends, and office colleagues very gently and politely and behave very softly. They may be very responsible and cautious with compare of normal people in daily life.

Treatment

          Anxiety patients should be treated mostly by psychotherapy, psychological counseling, taking care of and letting them feel like we love and respect them without making them deem that we are showering them everything like love, care and respect only for treatment, means, we are truly doing all this about them. It is important that medications are seen as a short-term measure, rather than the solution to anxiety disorders. Research studies have shown that psychological therapies, such as cognitive behavior therapy, are much more effective than medications in managing anxiety disorders in the long term. Some people with anxiety disorders are worriers, who fret about a problem rather than actively solve it. Learning how to break down a problem into its various components and then decide on a course of action is a valuable skill that can help manage generalized anxiety and depression. Learning to behave assertively is central to developing a stronger self-esteem. Physical activity is another helpful way to manage anxiety. Aim to do some physical activity at least three to four times every week, and vary your activities to avoid boredom.

            A major component psychotherapy is Exposure Therapy; involves deliberately confronting your fears in order to desensitize yourself. Exposure allows you to train yourself to redefine the danger or fear aspect of the situation trigger. The steps of exposure therapy may include:

1. Rank your fears in order, from most to least threatening.
2. Choose to work first on one of your least threatening fears.
3. Think about the feared situation. Imagine yourself experiencing the situation.
4. Analyse your fears, what are you afraid of?
5. Work out a plan that includes a number of small steps for example, gradually decrease the distance between yourself and the feared situation or object, or gradually increase the amount of time spent in the feared situation.
6.  Resist the urge to leave. Use relaxation, breathing techniques and coping statements to help manage your anxiety.
7. Appreciate that nothing bad happened.
8. Repeat the exposure as often as you can to build confidence that you can cope.
9. When you are ready, tackle another feared situation in the same step-by-step manner.

Cognitive therapy

§  Cognitive therapy focuses on changing patterns of thinking and beliefs that are associated with, and trigger, anxiety. For example, a person with a social phobia may make their anxiety worse by negative thoughts such as, ‘Everyone thinks I’m boring’.

§  The basis of cognitive therapy is that beliefs trigger thoughts, which then trigger feelings and produce behaviors. For example, let’s say you believe (perhaps unconsciously) that you must be liked by everyone in order to feel worthwhile. If someone turns away from you in mid-conversation, you may think, ‘This person hates me’, which makes you feel anxious.

§  Cognitive therapy strategies include rational ‘self-talk’, reality testing, attention training, cognitive challenging and cognitive restructuring. This includes monitoring your self-talk, challenging unhelpful fears and beliefs, and testing out the reality of negative thoughts.

Relaxation techniques

            A person who feels anxious most of the time has trouble relaxing, but knowing how to release muscle tension can be a helpful strategy. Relaxation techniques include:

Progressive muscle relaxation

Isometric relaxation exercises

Fresh Air Breathing 

Yoga

            Medical Science is developing day-by-day and new techniques, researches are however under process and discovery to provide relief to such people suffering from Anxiety Disorders. Hopefully, there would some good medicines discovered for rapid positive response over mental health in the future. We all should love, respect and value the emotions, sentiments of those, especially who are fighting with mental problems that is, Anxiety / Depression. Spread love, be soft and gentle with everyone, after all we are human being, and we should be very kind with living things specially with humans.