Anxiety
Anxiety is an emotion characterised by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different from fear in that fear is defined as the emotional response to a present threat, whereas anxiety is the anticipation of a future one. It is often accompanied by nervous behaviour such as pacing back and forth, somatic complaints, and rumination.
Anxiety is a feeling of uneasiness and worry, usually generalised and unfocused as an overreaction to a situation that is only subjectively seen as menacing. It is often accompanied by muscular tension, restlessness, fatigue, inability to catch one's breath, tightness in the abdominal region, nausea, and problems in concentration. Anxiety is closely related to fear, which is a response to a real or perceived immediate threat ; anxiety involves the expectation of a future threat, including dread. People facing anxiety may withdraw from situations which have provoked anxiety in the past.
The emotion of anxiety can persist beyond the developmentally appropriate time periods in response to specific events, and thus turn into one of the multiple anxiety disorders. The difference between anxiety disorder and anxiety is that people with an anxiety disorder experience anxiety excessively or persistently for approximately 6 months, or even during shorter time periods in children. Anxiety disorders are among the most persistent mental problems and often last decades. Anxiety can also be experienced within other mental disorders.
Anxiety vs. fear
Anxiety is distinguished from fear, which is an appropriate cognitive and emotional response to a perceived threat. Anxiety is related to the specific behaviours of fight-or-flight responses, defensive behaviour or escape. There is a false presumption that often circulates that anxiety only occurs in situations perceived as uncontrollable or unavoidable, but this is not always so. David Barlow defines anxiety as "a future-oriented mood state in which one is not ready or prepared to attempt to cope with upcoming negative events," and that it is a distinction between future and present dangers which divides anxiety and fear. Another description of anxiety is agony, dread, terror, or even apprehension. In positive psychology, anxiety is described as the mental state that results from a difficult challenge for which the subject has insufficient coping skills.Fear and anxiety can be differentiated into four domains: duration of emotional experience, temporal focus, specificity of the threat, and motivated direction. Fear is short-lived, present-focused, geared towards a specific threat, and facilitates escape from threat. On the other hand, anxiety is long-acting, future-focused, broadly focused towards a diffuse threat, and promotes excessive caution while approaching a potential threat and interferes with constructive coping.
Joseph E. LeDoux and Lisa Feldman Barrett have both sought to separate automatic threat responses from additional associated cognitive activity within anxiety.
Evolutionary perspectives
and evolutionary psychology interpret anxiety as an evolved defences that helps organisms avoid potential threats; by design, such defenses can produce "false alarms" when the cost of a missed danger would be high. Contemporary reviews stress that this framing does not treat anxiety disorders as adaptive, but rather as dysregulations or context‑insensitive activation of otherwise useful systems; the perspective is used for explanation and psychoeducation, not as a specific therapy.Symptoms
Anxiety can be experienced with long, drawn-out daily symptoms that reduce quality of life, known as chronic anxiety, or it can be experienced in short spurts with sporadic, stressful panic attacks, known as acute anxiety. Symptoms of anxiety can range in number, intensity, and frequency, depending on the person. However, most people do not suffer from chronic anxiety.Anxiety can induce several psychological pains or mental disorders, and may lead to self-harm or suicide.
The behavioural effects of anxiety may include withdrawal from situations which have provoked anxiety or negative feelings in the past. Other effects may include changes in sleeping patterns, changes in habits, an increase or decrease in food intake, and increased motor tension.
The emotional effects of anxiety may include feelings of apprehension or dread, trouble concentrating, feeling tense or jumpy, anticipating the worst, irritability, restlessness, watching for signs of danger, and a feeling of emptiness. It may also include a feeling of helplessness.
The cognitive effects of anxiety may include thoughts about suspected dangers, such as an irrational fear of dying or having a heart attack, when in reality, all one is experiencing is mild chest pain, for example.
The physiological symptoms of anxiety may include:
- Neurological, as headache, paresthesias, fasciculations, vertigo, or presyncope.
- Digestive, as abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhea, indigestion, dry mouth, or globus. Stress hormones released in an anxious state have an impact on bowel function and can manifest physical symptoms that may contribute to or exacerbate IBS.
- Respiratory, as shortness of breath or sighing breathing.
- Cardiac, as palpitations, tachycardia, or chest pain.
- Muscular, as fatigue, tremors, or tetany.
- Cutaneous, as perspiration, or itchy skin.
- Uro-genital, as frequent urination, urinary urgency, dyspareunia, or impotence, chronic pelvic pain syndrome.
Types
Existential
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, in The Concept of Anxiety, described anxiety or dread associated with the "dizziness of freedom" and suggested the possibility for positive resolution of anxiety through the self-conscious exercise of responsibility and choosing. In Art and Artist, the psychologist Otto Rank wrote that the psychological trauma of birth was the pre-eminent human symbol of existential anxiety and encompasses the creative person's simultaneous fear of – and desire for – separation, individuation, and differentiation.The theologian Paul Tillich characterised existential anxiety as "the state in which a being is aware of its possible nonbeing", and he listed three categories for the nonbeing and resulting anxiety: ontic, moral, and spiritual. According to Tillich, the last of these three types of existential anxiety is predominant in modern times, while the others were predominant earlier. Tillich argues that spiritual anxiety can either be accepted as part of the human condition or resisted with negative consequences. In its pathological form, it may "drive the person toward the creation of certitude in systems of meaning which are supported by tradition and authority" even though such "undoubted certitude is not built on the rock of reality".
According to Viktor Frankl, the author of Man's Search for Meaning, when a person is faced with extreme mortal dangers, the most basic of all human wishes is to find a meaning of life to combat the "trauma of nonbeing" as death is near.
Depending on the source of the threat, psychoanalytic theory distinguishes three types of anxiety: realistic, neurotic and moral.
Test, performance, and competitive
Test
According to the Yerkes-Dodson law, an optimal level of arousal is necessary to best complete a task such as an exam, performance, or competitive event. However, when the anxiety or level of arousal exceeds that optimum, the result is a decline in performance.Test anxiety is the uneasiness, apprehension, or nervousness felt by students who have a fear of failing an exam. Students who have test anxiety may experience any of the following: the association of grades with personal worth; fear of embarrassment by a teacher; fear of alienation from parents or friends; time pressures; or feeling a loss of control. Sweating, dizziness, headaches, racing heartbeats, nausea, fidgeting, uncontrollable crying or laughing and drumming on a desk are all common. Because test anxiety hinges on fear of negative evaluation, debate exists as to whether test anxiety is itself a unique anxiety disorder or whether it is a specific type of social phobia. The DSM-IV classifies test anxiety as a type of social phobia.
Research indicates that test anxiety among U.S. high-school and college students has been rising since the late 1950s. Test anxiety remains a challenge for students, regardless of age, and has considerable physiological and psychological impacts. Management of test anxiety focuses on achieving relaxation and developing mechanisms to manage anxiety. The routine practice of slow, Device-Guided Breathing is a major component of behavioural treatments for anxiety conditions.
Performance and competitive
and competitive anxiety happen when an individual's performance is measured against others. An important distinction between competitive and non-competitive anxiety is that competitive anxiety makes people view their performance as a threat. As a result, they experience a drop in their ordinary ability, whether physical or mental, due to that perceived stress.Competitive anxiety is caused by a range of internal factors, including high expectations, outside pressure, lack of experience, and external factors like the location of a competition. It commonly occurs in those participating in high-pressure activities like sports and debates. Some common symptoms of competitive anxiety include muscle tension, fatigue, weakness, a sense of panic, apprehensiveness, and panic attacks.
There are 4 major theories of how anxiety affects performance: Drive theory, Inverted U theory, Reversal theory, and The Zone of Optimal Functioning theory.
Drive theory believes that anxiety is positive and performance improves proportionally to the level of anxiety. This theory is not well accepted.
The Inverted U theory is based on the idea that performance peaks at a moderate stress level. It is called Inverted U theory because the graph that plots performance against anxiety looks like an inverted "U".
Reversal theory suggests that performance increases in relation to the individual's interpretation of their arousal levels. If they believed their physical arousal level would help them, their performance would increase, if they didn't, their performance would decrease. For example: Athletes were shown to worry more when focusing on results and perfection rather than the effort and growth involved.
The Zone of Optimal Functioning theory proposes that there is a zone where positive and negative emotions are in a balance which lead to feelings of dissociation and intense concentration, optimizing the individual's performance levels.