Now-a-days anxiety is a common term found in everyone’s vocabulary. There is hardly anyone who has not struggled with this negative emotion.

Yes, experiencing an anxiety is a normal part of life. 

It is completely normal to feel fearful, especially in challenging or threatening situation. For instance, feeling anxious is common reaction to events like giving presentation, conducting meetings or taking a final examination. 

Here you are concerned about the process and final outcome.

In short, anxiety is nothing but experiencing nervousness about things that are about to happen, or might happen. It is an unpleasant feeling characterized by anticipation of future danger or misfortune and perception of facing serious trouble.

At the same time such behavior helps you to stay alert and focused. Therefore, in a good sense anxiety acts as a protective mechanism when you are facing demanding situations. Actually, anxiety is your body’s reaction to a threat that challenge your survival. 

However, the problem arises when anxiety is persistent and can have detrimental effects on your mental health. Perhaps anxiety disorders result in significant disability and impact your quality of life.

Life with anxiety

Anxiety is the prime reason for foggy thinking. The anxious thoughts seems to overtake your entire brain. 

The constant rumination, worry and racing thoughts exhaust your brain. When your brain is mostly involved in the processing of fearful thoughts, it results in disturbance in an important cognitive process such as thinking, problem solving and decision making. Additionally, anxiety can lead to lack of sleep that further affect your mood.

You start to feel being mentally sluggish and fuzzy. A lack of mental clarity makes it difficult for you to focus, learn or recall. Living with muddled and unclear thoughts impact logical reasoning, short-term memory and create a vague sense of you are just “off”.

With clouded thinking, you are unable to function as sharply as usual. Sometimes, it feels frightening and worrisome that can further increase your anxiety. This, of course, form an infinite loop of anxiety and clouded thinking and cycle continues to repeat endlessly.

Obviously, when your mind is consumed with racing thoughts, it can be very difficult to focus on work. A small nasty thought is enough to drag your attention away from important task.

When you struggle with anxiety, you experience an extreme worry about various things. Your brain is mostly pre-occupied with multiple thoughts of negative events from past or predicts danger in the future. The uncomfortable feelings make it difficult for you to pay attention to what’s going around you. As a result, you are persistently unable to carry out long or complex task. 

This can also make it difficult for you to remember things. You start to forget small things like completing work assignment or purchasing groceries.

You find it increasingly hard to function normally or complete daily activities. As a result, you become more prone to procrastination. Combined, both symptoms can significantly hinder your productivity and damage your performance. This leads to a significant problem at home, school, work and social environment. 

When you are suffering from excess form of anxiety, your brain might experience exaggerated fear over the situation and keeps you in a hypervigilant state.  

In anxiety, your mind never necessarily becomes quiet even you go to sleep. Racing thoughts can stay with you overnight causing fear-based nightmares and sleep disturbances.

A paralyzing fear of anything prevents you from doing certain things. You fear that when you act in a certain way that will be humiliating or embarrassing. A constant worry about being judged or criticized generate misplaced feelings of shame. 

Worry increases distress and impairment. It changes brain’s activities in response to an extreme stressors in order to prepare body to save from danger. You start to avoid gatherings, social interactions or performance situations. Thus, chronic anxiety results in significant disability in personal, social and occupational functioning. 

When anxiety become a problem

When anxiety remains unchecked, you are likely to doubt about your own abilities to handle situations that could negatively affect your self-esteem. 

Anxiety takes a heavy toll on your mental health, and you find yourself battling with own thoughts more often than normal. It turns out to be quite problematic if you are already suffering from other mental health issues. Anxiety is known to flare up mental illnesses like depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD) and post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD). 

Also Check : Mental Disorder : An Invisible Illness

Stop struggling with anxiety

Having anxiety doesn’t mean you have to live with it for your entire life. With the right care and treatment, you can reach to your full potential. 

If anxiety is interrupting with your daily life and affecting your work or relationships, it would be better to visit mental health experts. Timely and accurate detection of anxiety helps to initiate adequate treatment in the form of psychotherapy and psychoactive medications. 

Self-help approaches can help you to manage your anxious feeling to great extent. Behavioral therapy helps to teach strategies for recognizing and overcoming distressing thoughts. It usually includes relaxation therapy and problem-solving strategies to improve specific behavior caused by anxiety. 

Additionally, a range of medications are used to manage both physical and psychological symptoms of anxiety. Therefore, getting in touch with your mental health care expert is best to resolve your anxiety symptoms.

Also Check : Be Okay With Uncertainty

Disclaimer 

Mediclin Brain Health’s content is for informational and educational purposes only. Our website is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.