Anxiety and its Disorders

Anxiety in general is often described as a feeling of worry or nervousness, but in psychology it is considered a disorder, nervous disorder to be exact, which is the state of being in excessive worry or uneasiness. Anxiety has many different branches of disorders that are all very different and are trigged by the brain in regions that are committed to fear recognition. Anxiety has become a millennium term used to describe the smallest of issues in teenagers’ lives. It has lost its true concept of meaning over the years going from a serious health disorder to a child complaining about their math class. Anxiety isn’t just limited to those feelings of uneasiness; another way to look at anxiety is to recognize that it could be a feeling of not knowing your place in the world, which in turn creates an overwhelming amount of questions for one person to handle.

The most current conceptions of anxiety were first thought up in the nineteenth century during a period of new technologies like railroads, and created fast rates of social change. The new technology developed in this time created the whole world to feel uncertain and uneasy about where these new advances were heading. New terminology was quickly replacing the vocabulary of the eighteenth century. One of the new words, “neurosis,” replaced “nervous disease,” also known now as anxiety. “Neurosis,” however, was a very broad term used to umbrella all the disorders that came with anxiety, which started the time where disorders began to get their own names. The feeling of uneasiness and uncertainty in this time period could only be described as the whole world experiencing anxiety of what was to come in the future. The only people this seemed to not affect were the wealthy middle class, who were excited, ready to see new technology, and ready for a fresh new take on anxious symptoms.

The most current issue in the study of anxiety is the use of a false definition. So many children and young adults these days use it as a glorified social media disorder posted all over the Internet. Children take it to the extreme by saying their classes cause them so much anxiety that they can’t get their work done, but if there were three football games and four parties that need to be attended young adults will find a way to attend without a hint of worry. Anxiety is the excessive feeling of worry and nervousness, something that most young adults are overdramatic about. Children do have worry about schoolwork, chores, and extracurricular activities, but rarely to the extreme of having anxiety disorders. Anxiety can be extremely uncomfortable and sometimes even follows with self-loathing thoughts of “I can’t” and “I don’t know.” Anxiety is always a bad thing though. The feeling of comfortableness is used as a motivator to try to do better in studies or work. It also helps us focus when high intensity situations appear before us. When anxiety is present in your life everyday and so intense that it disrupts your daily living it’s called an anxiety disorder. There are five major anxiety disorders types of anxiety disorders: phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder. These make up the most common psychological disorders in North America.