How Anxiety Works?

Anxiety can occur from time to time in anyone’s life. Still, a mental health professional and your medical care provider should assess chronic or severe anxiety that interferes with quality of life.

Generally, when you perceive any threat, the body responds by activating the stress response or fight, flight, faint, or flee response. The body releases adrenaline and cortisol that start a chain of events in the body to help you address stressful or dangerous events.

The body shuts down unnecessary processes to preserve energy for facing stressful events. Blood rushes to large muscle groups, and heart and breath rates increase as part of this process.

Anxiety may be most commonly linked with intense feelings of worry, fear, or stress, along with behavior changes, but it can also have consequences on physical health.

Additional symptoms of anxiety may include feeling nervous or tense, a sense of impending danger, increased heart rate, rapid breathing, sweating, shaking, feeling weak, fatigue, difficulty sleeping, trouble concentrating, gastrointestinal symptoms, difficulty controlling worry, and experiencing the urge to avoid things that may trigger anxiety.

Several disorders can include anxiety: generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, specific phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Long-term anxiety can result in an increased risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, weight gain, and anxiety may be linked with the development of irritable bowel syndrome. Because the stress response produces rapid and shallow breathing, anxiety may worsen asthma symptoms. If your body becomes accustomed to long-term stress or repeated anxiety, it may have difficulty regulating and returning to pre-anxiety levels of functioning. Over time, this can weaken your immune system.

If you experience anxiety and its symptoms frequently or feel like you’re worrying too frequently and it has begun to interfere with any part of your life, it’s important to have your symptoms evaluated by a medical professional. Therapy can be very helpful in addressing anxiety. Learning coping skills for anxiety and discussing the experiences and thoughts that may contribute to it can be very valuable in treating anxiety.