Among all the emotions that people feel in daily life, anxiety is one less commonly encountered in oneself than others. Anxiety is also less intuitive to understand, unlike more easily understandable feelings like happiness or sadness for example. There are ways to help most people understand and empathize with this emotion. This personal account is one such move. Here is the dictionary definition of the word anxiety as provided by www.dictionary.com: Anxiety (ang-zahy-i-tee) noun, plural anxieties.
distress or uneasiness of mind caused by fear of danger or misfortune:
He felt anxiety about the possible loss of his job.
earnest but tense desire; eagerness:
He had a keen anxiety to succeed in his work.
Psychiatry . a state of apprehension and psychic tension occurring in some forms of mental disorder.
This is a description of anxiety in the American Psychiatric Association (APA) website: Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress and can be beneficial in some situations. It can alert us to dangers and help us prepare and pay attention. Anxiety disorders differ from normal feelings of nervousness or anxiousness, and involve excessive fear or anxiety. Anxiety disorders are the most common of mental disorders and affect nearly 30 percent of adults at some point in their lives. . But anxiety disorders are treatable and a number of effective treatments are available. Treatment helps most people lead normal productive lives. Anxiety refers to anticipation of a future concern and is more associated with muscle tension and avoidance behavior. My personal description of anxiety is that out of the most commonly experienced emotions in the daily life of most people, anxiety feels like worry and that something is wrong. I developed a saying to describe my own experience: fire and barbed wire. When it is more intensely felt, it feels like barbed wire is wrapped around my whole brain, tightly constricting and cutting into my brain and burns like it?s set on fire. In an episode of panic attack that I used to regularly have, the anxiety felt can be so intense that I felt like I am about to faint but never quite actually fainting and everything is spinning around me in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions at once.