Are you unsure whether your anxiety is normal or if it has escalated to unhealthy levels? Knowing the difference between healthy anxiety and a clinical anxiety disorder can help you sort out what kind of professional help you might need and which coping strategies are most likely to bring relief.
What Does It Mean to Be Anxious?
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 worrying about say, crossing a busy street or about a persistent toothache — helps keep us safe. It’s also a natural response to stressors. As Dr. Bourne explains, “If you didn’t feel anxiety in response to everyday challenges involving personal loss or failure, something would be wrong.”
“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 and a teacher at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center at Mount Sinai Hospital. 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?
According to Bourne, 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.
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 form, anxiety can cause you to feel detached from yourself or even fearful of dying, going crazy, or thinking irrationally, Bourne adds.
“To read this article in its entirety click on this link: Are You Just Feeling Anxious, or Do You Have an Anxiety Disorder?“