Anxious or Anxiety Disorder? Here’s How to Tell the Difference
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Although anxiety is often an unpleasant feeling, it’s actually a healthy response to certain triggers.
“There are many situations that come up in everyday life when it is appropriate and reasonable to react with some anxiety,” says Edmund Bourne, PhD, a former director of the Anxiety Treatment Center in San Jose and Santa Rosa, California, and the author of The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook.
That’s because anxiety — as in day-to-day concern about say, crossing a busy street or about a persistent toothache — helps keep us safe. It’s also a natural response to stressors. “If you didn’t feel anxiety in response to everyday challenges involving personal loss or failure, something would be wrong,” says Dr. Bourne.
“Normal” anxiety is proportionally related to a specific situation or problem and lasts only as long as the situation or problem does, says Sarah Gundle, PsyD, a clinical psychologist in private practice in New York City. For example, it’s completely normal to feel anxious about speaking in front of a large group of people or meeting an important deadline at work.
What Does Anxiety Feel Like?
While people may experience anxiety in different ways, in many cases it affects a person’s entire being — psychologically, physically, and behaviorally — and it crosses over into something truly distressing, says Bourne.
Psychologically, anxiety involves subjective feelings of uneasiness or apprehension, he says. Physically, anxiety might include bodily sensations such as rapid heartbeat, muscle tension, dry mouth, or sweating. And behaviorally, it could lead a person to avoid ordinary situations, stop communicating about feelings, or fail to make decisions.
In its most extreme forms, anxiety can cause you to feel detached from yourself (known as depersonalization), disconnected from your surroundings (derealization), like you might die, or like you’re thinking irrationally, Bourne adds.
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