What is anxiety?

Anxiety is just a natural response to danger. I think everyone gets different symptoms and it depends if they have other underlying problems or not. The cure? Embrace it and don't try to fight it, acknowledge that it's there. Everyone feels it too. You can use the energy to your advantage and I think that's the most helpful way of dealing with it. Changing the energy is similar to transforming the energy of NoFap. With that said, i'm still learning to conquer my own anxiety. Guided sleep meditation helped me out a lot though.

 

Anxiety is worrying about what happens next.

 

basically if you worry too much about future..you may have anxiety..and if you worry too much about past you may have depression
depression = superlative of disappointment
anxiety = superlative of tension
solution for depression and anxiety: "be in the present moment"
do what you do..if you are brushing your teeth..you should do it consciously..don't think of anything else

 

And guess what? Lower testosterone fuels anxiety. Confidence is king.

 

if you are the the present moment you will not have anxiety or depression..that's why many mystics advise people to practise mindfulness

 

Anxiety is a sensation we feel when strong desire to act is being suppressed.
You are presented with some stimulating information, this information produces a strong response and for some reason you are unable to act on that strong response.
Desire to act is in essence a signal in the brain, this signal is continuously generated to facilitate behavior and the stronger the signal the more compulsion we feel to act, if however we are unable to do anything to remedy the problem, we have increasing urge to act but cant.

Seeing someone next to us walking without noticing impending danger, will prompt us to alert that person or act. We are able to act out our impulse and activation subsides.
Seeing someone far away, walking an not noticing danger creates anxiety because we can not immediately do anything. So the impulse builds creating overwhelming sense of anxiety.
The latter is bread and butter of horror movies, viewer is shown horrible things happening to others he/she can not do anything about. Forcing the person in to state of anxiety.

 

What you say is not true, anxiety is integral part of human nature, no different than sense of joy, you seem to see only its effects but not its main purpose.

 

I think simply worrying about something is not anxiety, but tension.

Anxiety is a sort of uncontrollable worriness which causes you nervousness that happens at specific time, place, condition. It can sever from random Anxiety of thought till it becomes psychosomatic where the person starts getting Fast heatbeats, not understandable discomfort, stomacheaches, headaches, beathing problems, stress, High Blood pressure, fatigue. These psychosomatic feelings can be anything. Sometimes it is a disaster of pain and struggle, so Anxiety is more to be a disease than randomly for someone to say "I feel anxious" .

Anxiety has nothing to do with confidence.

 

What made you choose exploration of anxiety as your life's mission. Its a tall order.

 

The scariest thing is not anxiety, but anxiety disorders when it comes extreme, it appears as psychotic symptoms, constant fear. It's extremely terrifying if one must come thru that moment

 

Sup brah, I deal with anxiety. I'm discovering that it is severely heightened by my porn use. Primarily because this addiction alters what parts of your brain function over time. Your emotional systems within the brain become overactive whereas your reasoning centers quite down. I'm finding that mindfulness meditation (focusing on your breath) has helped me out. I'm doing about 40 min a day and it's becoming noticeable. However, I have been practicing for a while now so it does take some time to notice. Last, check out Mel Robbins 5 second rule. I'm just learning about this so haven't applied it to my anxiety but I think it has some promise on rewiring your brain and thought habits. Peace.

 

i think you are confused between fear and anxiety..anxiety is not an integral part of human nature..but fear is..anxiety is developed as a result of certain life experiences..just look at an innocent child..he is completely unaware about past or future..he just have a present in front of him..he may be afraid of cockroach..but it's just a fear..this fear may or may not develop as an anxiety in future..say if he is 30 now and still he refuse to sleep in a room with a cockroach in it..we can say his thoughts about cockroach has developed an anxiety in him..actually our brain doesn't know what's really dangerous to us..our subconscious will accept all the things that our conscious mind gives as input..so for a man who has a phobia of cockroach..his brain will send the same danger signal as if he knows there is a lion in his room..a lion is defenitely a threat to human life..so we can categorise it as a true fear..but fear of confronting a cockroach is just categorised as an anxiety or phobia eventhough the brain send the same danger signal as if you think of confronting a lion..so inshort anxiety can be generalised as "unwanted fear or worry about anything that gonna be happen"

 

If you have had any traumas in your life it can create Anxiety pathways your brain now follows anytime you are put in that situation again

I do believe.

Me? When I was an Alcoholic, my Anxiety levels were off the charts. Oh jeez it was a nightmare. Thankfully my Anxiety is pretty much gone away and so has the Depression thank goodness

 

I am not confused.
You seem to combine normal anxiety all people feel under specific conditions with anxiety disorders, where people feel anxiety for no apparent or rational reason and then assumed that any manifestation of anxiety is a disorder.

When your wife does not come home and does not answer her phone - that is anxiety.
When you want to know if you passed final test and cant sit sill waiting for that test result - that is anxiety.
When you are threatened and you are not sure what to do - that is anxiety.
When you are in a hurry and you are waiting for the elevator - that is anxiety.
When you need to do something but cant - you feel anxiety.

Yes some people develop anxiety disorders, but they represent tiny minority of encounters with this feeling.
Anxiety is the result strong brain activity in response to some stimulation that is not managed by action.
Spike in brain activity creates massive impulse to act, if action is taken, feedback from that action dampens brian activity and it subsides, if no action is taken brain remains hyperactive, producing over stimulation of the nervous system - we experience it as anxiety.
This is exactly why anxious people like to hit things, to damped over-stimulated brain, we scream in anger or pain for the same reason, to dampen and calm down overloaded brain.

 

This is worriness.

 

"Worriness" as you put it, is in the definition of anxiety. Oxford Dictionary defines anxiety with following words - "A feeling of worry..."

 

yes..thoughts of fear from the previous life experience leads to anxiety..this anxiety may or may not result in phobia..so fear is the root cause for anxiety and anxiety is the root cause for phobia..if you have no fear of something then you have no anxiety of thinking about it..if you are not afraid of exams and stay cool then you will never be anxious about the result..so fear is the exact basic human expression..anxiety and phobia are only the long term consequences of fear...also you mentioned that "waiting for a lift in a hurry" is anxiety..it depends on the situation..if something good is waiting for you there on the next floor of the building..then we won't say he is anxious..we just say he is excited..at the same time consider the other situation..if he is late to his office in the next floor..it's his 'fear' that he gathered from the thought process about his previous experiences that give him anxiety when he is waiting for lift..so in short we can say fear is something that we experienced on the past and anxiety is the "unwanted worry about the future that occur due to the 'thought' processes regarding that past experience"..so anxiety will defenitely disappear if we become thoughtless..means don't think about those future stuffs..just concentrate on the present..that's what we are doing through "meditation,sleep and mindfulness"