Feeling Anxious?
Anxiety is something that we cannot escape given the adversities that we may experience everyday. Anxiety is a condition that doesn’t show itself out of nowhere. It slowly gets on us without us really knowing.
Depression is a condition that brings us down and makes us feel like life is not worth it anymore. It slowly creeps its way into our system and turns us into a kind of person who isn’t enthusiastic about life anymore.
What makes matters more alarming is that both of these mental conditions are very common in every part of the world and may inflict anyone. Fortunately, they can be overcome by knowing how to cope with anxiety and depression.
I will be discussing some of the ways on how to know if you have anxiety or depression, how anxiety leads to depression in the long run and vice versa, as well as some tips on how to overcome them. Overall we’ll discuss how to cope with anxiety and depression in the comfort of your own home.
What is Anxiety and How it May Lead to Depression and Vice Versa
What exactly is anxiety?
Anxiety is often described as an unpleasant feeling that we all experience such as always being uptight, nervous, tense or irritable. It may affect how we think and behave as excessive worry may prevent us from doing things that we need and want to do. Anxiety causes us to feel worried for a long period of time even if the worry doesn’t have any basis.
But it’s normal to worry or feel anxious about some things in life. In fact, it can often be helpful. For example, worrying about how you’ll pass your exam, driving test, acing that interview, you then prepare yourself by studying and as a result of being motivated by that concern is good. How do you know if it is good or bad anxiety? Well according to research It’s been found that symptoms of anxiety are much more frequent when the condition known as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is present. General worriers tend to spend an average of 56 minutes a day worrying, while people with GAD often spend over 300 minutes a day worrying — over five times as much.
Another thing to know about anxiety is that it goes hand in hand with depression. They are two very different conditions but are often seen in tandem with each other. If you want to know how to cope with anxiety and depression, then you need to understand how one relates to the other.
Sometimes having anxiety may lead to depression because being constantly worried will drag you down, filling you with negative thoughts that eventually lead to depression. Having depression may also lead to anxiety because depression slows productivity which eventually leads to long-term worries and anxiety. Once you know how to cope with anxiety and depression, you can relax without having to worry about one condition breeding the other.
Symptoms of Anxiety
For symptoms, there are four categories of symptoms to know whether you have anxiety or not, namely: physical, thoughts, emotions, and behavior.
Let’s start with the physical symptoms that you may have. Some symptoms would include tension, muscular pain, dizziness, chest pain, trembling, shaking, and palpitations.
For thoughts, you would often ask to worry about if something bad happens, you would always look at the worst case scenario, your mind is always on alert, and you often worry all the time.
For emotional symptoms, you would often feel nervous, panicky, or stressed. You’d also feel very irritable and would have a short temper.
Lastly, you would have behavioral symptoms. If you feel like wanting not to do things you like, often pace around, get spooked easily, talk too fast, and get angry at people too fast.
In the next post we will discuss self help tips for anxiety.