What Does Anxiety Feel Like? (Types and Symptoms of the Invisible Killer)
At some stages in their lives, as many as 40 million US adults will experience anxiety disorders. That figure, from a report by the Anxiety & Depression Association of America can practically be doubled when taking into account cases of anxiety from around the world.
Yet despite impacting the lives of so many people from across the globe, anxiety remains a misunderstood illness, particularly among two key groups of people: Those who aren’t sure whether the debilitating symptoms they’re experiencing are a sign of anxiety or not; and those whose friends and loved ones are living with anxiety.
Whichever camp you fall into, those first throes of an anxiety disorder are enough to set your mind racing with questions:
- What does anxiety feel like?
- How do I know if I actually have it?
- What can I do to stop an anxiety disorder ruining my life?
- What can I do to support someone else with their anxiety?
Here, we’ll look into the answers to all of the most common questions about the causes, symptoms and solutions of this most misunderstood of mental illnesses.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Anxiety vs. Anxiety Disorder
- Different types of anxiety disorders
- What can I do if I (Or someone I care about) Have an anxiety disorder?
- Anxiety doesn’t have to control your life
Anxiety vs. Anxiety Disorder
The most common misconception about this illness is that all anxiety is bad. The truth is, a little bit of anxiety can be helpful.
If we start to get anxious about an important exam or a job interview, for example, that’s our body’s way of reminding us that we should do all we can to be prepared and ensure we get the desired outcome.
This is a gift left to us by our ancestors who needed anxiety to trigger a fight or flight response when faced with all manner of wild beasts and dangerous situations that threatened their very survival.
Today, the dangers we face are unlikely to involve potentially being torn limb from limb by a wild beast, but we do still need the fight or flight response to help us make decisions about the best way to survive. If the building we are in catches fire, for example, anxiety is the thing that says “Hey, you know what? We’d better get out of here!”
However, problems arise when our brains and bodies start acting as if we are in a burning building even when we are perfectly safe. In other words, when the level of anxiety we feel is disproportionate to the danger (or in most cases lack of danger) we are in.
When this happens, we are faced with what’s called an anxiety disorder, which can take many different forms.
Different types of anxiety disorders
Whilst a number of common symptoms can occur with all types of disorders, it would be unhelpful to simply give you one blanket answer to the most important question we are addressing here: What does anxiety feel like?
The truth is that different anxiety disorders occur for different reasons, typically bringing about their own (occasionally overlapping symptoms). If we’re going to tackle your anxiety or that of someone you care about, it’s helpful to look at some of the most common anxiety disorders in turn.
General Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
This is the most common form of anxiety disorder. It’s what a lot of people typically think of when they think of anxiety. Affecting one in five American adults at some stage in their lives, GAD is typically more common in women, but that doesn’t mean to say men are immune from it.
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