Anxiety Disorders Series No. 2: How to identify abnormal anxiety?

  Anxiety is a common emotional state. What people commonly refer to as anxiety is anxiety caused by real causes, which is normal anxiety, or known as reality anxiety. Have you ever experienced anxiety? Some people may say that this is an obvious question, because people living in the real world always have to be anxious, because a person facing survival and development is bound to encounter various problems, including life, old age, sickness and death, as well as various difficulties and challenges, and even dangers or calamities, which will cause tension, anxiety, worry, apprehension, fear, and even fear or panic.  However, anxiety is abnormal when the severity of the anxiety is not proportional to the threat of a real event or when it lasts too long. Anxiety is often accompanied by changes in the functioning of the somatic and autonomic nervous systems and other psychiatric symptoms. For example, when you are overly anxious and nervous to the extent that you cannot focus on answering a question, you will fail the test; when you are on a date, if you are overly nervous, sweaty, flushed, or even have some dizziness and nausea, you may not be able to think of a single interesting thing to talk about that will ruin the date. Mild to moderate anxiety can improve most behavioral skills, but high levels of anxiety can interfere with behavioral skills. Therefore, when an individual experiences anxiety, it is important to identify whether the anxiety is normal or abnormal. When anxiety is unreasonable, excessive, or causes significant distress and interferes with the individual’s social functioning without an obvious real cause, it is abnormal anxiety and requires early consultation and systematic medication and psychotherapy.