.png)
An Overview of Anxiety
The topic for this week's NAMI on Campus meeting was anxiety. We chose it because we got the sense at our first, introductory meeting that it was a common affliction among our members. It turns out that anxiety disorders are actually the most common mental illness in America, affecting 18.1% of adults, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA), it's normal to feel some anxiety sometimes. I remember a psychiatrist explaining it to me as the normal flight-or-flight response. It becomes a disorder when it is persistent, uncontrollable, overwhelming, and life-altering.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) lists the most common anxiety disorders as:
Panic disorder (which is characterized by panic attacks),
Phobias (which are powerful reactions to strong, irrational fears),
Generalized anxiety disorder (which is a chronic, exaggerated, every-day worry),
And social anxiety disorder (which is an intense fear of social humiliation)
There are others, including separation anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, and substance/medication-induced anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders usually run in the family and/or are caused by environmental factors, such as experiencing violence, abuse, prolonged illness, or the death of a loved one.
The symptoms of an anxiety disorder can be found from many sources. NAMI lists the physical symptoms of a racing or pounding heart, shortness of breath, an upset stomach, sweating, tremors or twitches, fatigue, insomnia, etc. There are also the emotional symptoms of apprehension or dread, tenseness and jumpiness, restlessness or irritability, anticipating the worst, and being watchful for danger signs.
However, I don't think these dry lists of symptoms really portray anxiety in a way that helps people understand it. The Mighty is a community that has done an amazing job of portraying the way anxiety truly feels through blogs, stories, and videos. Artist Toby Allen, who illustrated a series of mental illnesses as monsters with cute, but scarily accurate descriptions, did a great job with the monster called Anxiety.
The truth is that anxiety is difficult to understand because not only are there so many different forms of it, but it also affects each individual differently. Everyone has his or her own triggers and set of symptoms, and each trigger might cause different symptoms. Each person afflicted also copes with it in different ways. For instance, I have stress relievers in various shapes and textures, and made with different materials, in addition to a bubble wrap simulator, a worry stone, a few adult coloring books, Play-Doh, 3 different types of journals, a 5-point breathing star, and a zen garden. I use these for different situations. I also do yoga and have tried a few meditation apps on my phone.
Because anxiety affects everyone differently, I can only try to give my interpretation of what it is to have it:
Anxiety is like this phantom that lives and swirls around inside your brain. While parts of it have always been there, other parts were planted by experiences in your life. It sometimes hides behind other thoughts and pushes the negative ones to the forefront of your mind. As it swirls around, it grows and shrinks, sometimes whispering and sometimes shouting out your fears and insecurities. It can warp your perception of reality, making you see danger or problems where they don't exist or blocking your view of the good things in a situation and overemphasizing the bad. Because it likes to point out and highlight the bad, it can often make you hypersensitive. Once it really latches onto you, it likes to drag you down a dark vortex that it personally created from negative and fearful thoughts that it directs like a musical conductor as they spin out of control. Sometimes it hides and lurks in the shadows for days or even weeks so you think it might be gone, but it never really is, and it always comes back.
The part about thoughts spinning out of control is actually called the Anxiety Spiral, and the University of Texas Counseling and Mental Health Center explains how to beat it by stopping it in its tracks and pulling it apart. I have found that writing down my thoughts as they come is a good way to slow them down and stop them from spiraling out of control.
The ADAA says that although anxiety is highly treatable, only 1/3 of those afflicted get help. That doesn't sound right. From my understanding, this lack of treatment comes from people not knowing enough about the disorder to know when to seek help, not being able to afford treatment, or feeling stigmatized for having a mental illness. Yesterday, NAMI on Campus had students take the Stigma Free pledge to educate themselves and others on mental health, to see the person and not the illness, and to take action. Hopefully, we will make a difference.