Feeling anxious and worried during difficult times is a common occurrence. You might feel tensed and fearful during tough events like exams, job interviews, health tests or some sort of public affairs. However, persistent and excessive fear means you’re having an anxiety disorder, and not just normal anxiety. This disorder is followed by irrelevant fright for things with no logical reasoning.
The person shows a range of symptoms depending on the type on anxiety disorder. The disorder causes heavy mental distress accompanied by physical symptoms as well. If you’re having anxiety disorder, you can experience the following signs:
Anxiety Disorder: Mental Symptoms
Constant and extreme worry
This is the major symptom you’ll have, if you’re suffering from one of the kinds of anxiety disorder. The fear and worry for a particular event/thing remains constant, extending over a time period of six months. You might try your best to stop the anxiety, but eventually the anxiety becomes overwhelming and extreme. It disturbs your daily life including work, studies and social relationships.
Unreasonable fear
If you’re having anxiety disorder, the fear and concern about certain thing or happening is almost unreasonable and irrelevant to occur. The anxiety makes you think about harmful risks and threats that are certainly non-existing in nearly all cases. You might feel like the fear is real and obvious, but the people around you will probably find it senseless.
Increase in your consciousness of fear
The fear is followed by heavy increase in alertness about the certain thing/event that is causing the worry. The anxious mind is always engrossed in thinking, and in turn making it overly concentrated towards the cause of the fear. You’d feel an increase in alertness and your adrenaline rush upon various happenings; big or small.
Self- Doubt
You find yourself more self-conscious, even in a crowd of people. You can feel an array of doubts rising in mind, and you question yourself more. Your mind works vigorously around these doubtful thoughts, making you mentally tired. You feel more uncertainty about the thing that is causing the fear.
Distracted from other necessary things
If you’re having one of the anxiety disorders, you’d be fully into thinking and worrying. Your concentration is completely on the matter causing the worry, and makes you distracted from other daily life chores. It interferes with your work affairs, education and your social bonds.
Anxiety Disorder: Physical Symptoms
Shivering and trembling
This is one of the common physical signs brought up as a result of the extreme fear and worry. Due to the intense anxiety, the adrenaline (hormone that makes the body prepare for stressful events) increases. Shaking of the body is one of the results of the activated adrenaline in the body.
Racing heart beats
When the body is facing severe fear, the heart starts pumping blood to the body regions that’d be needed during running away or confronting. This creates heart palpitations i.e. increase in the heartbeats.
Shortness in breathing
When you go through intense amount of fear, the body goes in preparation mode for the stressful event. During this, you might have difficulty in breathing and start choking. You may feel like you need more oxygen, and as a result you start taking deeper breaths, more rapidly. This can cause chest pains, fainting, dizziness, tingling or numbness in the body.
Indigestion
Anxiety disorder can also interfere with your food digestion. You might have stomach pains, cramps, diarrhea, constipation or feeling of a bloated stomach. These symptoms are the manifestations of the stress that the body received.
Muscle Pain
You might go through a chronic (long-term) muscle tension as a result of anxiety disorder. The body fights through a heavy amount of distress during the episodes of anxiety disorder. This strains the muscles, which eventually causes soreness and pain.
Insomnia
As a result of the fear, worry and intense anxiety, you might have a hard time sleeping. Your mind is over indulged in thinking and worry about the thing causing the fear. The mind becomes more conscious and alert which results in sleep disorder.
The above symptoms can bring a chain of other signs like increased blood pressure, impatience, and sweaty hands, having difficulty in swallowing and frequent urination. The symptoms vary according to the type of anxiety disorder.