Why anxiety happens?

Having anxiety from time to time is a normal experience, but people who have clinical anxiety have excessive and ongoing intense fear throughout the day about typical situations. Typical anxiety can be triggered by atypical experiences or things you don’t experience every day, like a first date, a job interview, or waiting for test results from your doctor. The situation is new or unusual, the outcome is unknown, so stress increases as you wait for the situation to resolve.

When you perceive a threat, such as the unknown in these examples, the body responds by secreting certain neurotransmitters and hormones to prepare you to fight, faint, flee, or freeze. The danger may not be physical, but the response is the same regardless. This physical response causes the symptoms that many experiences during periods of anxiety. Muscles tense in preparation for a fight, the heart rate increases to get more blood to muscles to flee if needed, breathing speeds up to move oxygen through the body more quickly.

For those with anxiety disorders, the experience is much more intense and can occur over “normal” events like driving, shopping, going to work, or any other number of things. Although there are different types of anxiety disorders, some basic symptoms include:

• Increased heart rate
• Feeling tense or nervous
• Rapid breathing
• Sweating
• A sense of coming danger
• Feeling fatigued or weak
• Difficulty concentrating on anything but the focus of the worry
• Problems sleeping
• Digestive issues, including nausea or vomiting
• Avoiding things that may trigger anxiety
• Trouble controlling the anxiety or worry

What causes anxiety is still not fully understood, but some medical conditions are linked with anxiety. Your doctor is likely to rule these out to ensure that there isn’t a physiological condition causing the anxiety. These conditions are drug use or withdrawal, chronic pain conditions, thyroid issues, and more. Some medications may cause feelings of anxiety. Talk with your doctor about the potential for the existence of any medical causes.

Trauma, worry, or stress due to ongoing illness, excessive stress that isn’t managed, and close relatives with anxiety may increase the likelihood that you may develop anxiety. While these risk factors don’t guarantee that you’ll have anxiety, they are considered causes or potential causes of anxiety.

Talk with a licensed mental health professional or your doctor if you’re experiencing symptoms of anxiety that are interfering with your daily life.