Some people have anxiety that is situational and triggers only after the happening of specific events, after receiving bad news or when suffering from physical illness. And then there are people who feel anxious all the time and can’t figure out the actual reason behind their anxious thoughts.
Whatever the problem, regardless of whether it’s big or small, related to the past, the present or the future, it has the capacity to make their thoughts become overwhelming and make them inactive with respect to other aspects of life.
Such people basically suffer from generalized anxiety disorder, which means that their mind is always occupied with a thought, usually pertaining to problems which have remained unresolved, and that makes them feel anxious. Anxiety has physical symptoms associated with it as well.
When someone continues to suffer from anxiety for a long period of time, the secretion of hormones which cause the sensation of feeling happy, such as serotonin, significantly reduces in their brain. This makes them disinterested in activities which they otherwise enjoyed in life, especially the ones involving social gatherings.
If you believe that anxiety is creating a serious mess in your life, then maybe it is time to seek help of a professional therapist.
You can measure the extent of your anxiety by assessing whether you’re exhibiting the following anxiety symptoms. These symptoms are generally felt by patients suffering from generalized anxiety disorders and depression.
You Feel Tense All The Time
One of the most important symptoms which you need to assess to gauge your anxiety level is to check the intensity of your thoughts. If your thoughts are intense and keep your mind occupied all the time, then you are suffering from chronic anxiety.
If anxiety-causing thoughts are triggered due to the onset of any specific event, then this form of anxiety is categorized under acute anxiety. Whatever the case maybe, both types of anxiety create sustained feeling of anxiousness in your mind.
You Feel Psychologically Ill
A person can easily judge if something is going wrong in his or her mind. Building a negative perception about others, or showing inappropriate behavior is one of the major symptoms of anxiety.
A person suffering from acute anxiety may indulge in psychotic behavior in order to avoid embarrassment. Panic disorder is one of the forms of acute anxiety during which a person may experience sudden and intense episodes fear regarding death, or passing out.
If the intensity and frequency of such panic attacks increases over time, then it is time to consult a psychologist about how to manage your clearly heightened level of anxiety.
You Also Feel Physiologically Ill
Every person during the course of his or her life experiences anxiety at some point. However, many people do not come out of its impact without help. Suffering from anxiety for a long period of time could potentially impact your physical well-being. This is due to the fact that anxiety creates sadness in our minds and makes us want to remain inactive for a longer period of time.
An inactive lifestyle becomes the source of different physiological illnesses. If you give anxiety the power to rule your mind, then a time will eventually come when it messes up almost every vital function of your body. Anxiety can make a person feel headaches of a varying frequency or intensity.
The digestive system could also get upset and display symptoms like diarrhea, nausea, pain or indigestion during times of stress. Those of who have suffered from anxiety also revealed that they feel tightness in their chest, shortness of breath or chest pain during acute anxiety. Some people also report occurrences of tremors during the onset of anxiety.
Your perception is negative about everything
Anxiety messes with your emotional state of mind and makes you feel like you’re under some kind of an emotional turmoil practically all the time. You feel low in confidence and become afraid of opting for new opportunities because of fear of failure. The negativity in your mind makes you perceive a negative outcome of every situation.
Among the causes of imagining negative outcomes for every situation are the bad experiences of the past which you may have suffered. You feel like you are trapped in the past and hence cannot make new and positive decisions about your future.
Another reason behind the development of such negative perception of life is the loss of cognitive ability due to continuous anxiety. Prolonged stress creates feelings of dreadfulness in people and lowers their ability to make rational decisions.