Sometimes we think that we are helpless and everything feel strange and unfriendly around us. This is not a rare feeling especially nowadays that indeed our daily lives are triggered by a lot of things. A lot of people are trapped in a life that demands more and more from them without enjoying it, this is causing anxiety and stress. Having these feelings often are beneficial when they are being used as a tool to make our lives easier. On the other hand, if anxiety gets out of hand it can not only influence our body but also our mind. According to Beck anxiety is the fear or worry that something bad will maybe happen. For example, when somebody is going to sit a very important exam or want to give an interview, they will probably grow anxiety. The crucial question is: When do they know if this anxiety escapes out of hand? What are the signs for that? To answer that first of all I should explain with a few words how does anxiety works in our brain.
A region in our brain called hypothalamus is sending messages to our endocrine system, which formulates and releases cortisol. Our brain is doing this procedure when there is an outsider factor that enables this action. When the outsider factor is not a thread any more, cortisol send negative feedback from our endocrine system to our brain in order to stop creating more cortisol. Experiencing pathological anxiety can arise either from disfunction to the very last procedure, or from disfunction on hypothalamus or other brain regions. These dysfunctions result from certain repeated behaviours that are causing stress, from stress sensitivity or other biological or environmental reasons. Pathological stress is a serious condition as it can cause disorders such as:
Generalised anxiety disorder which according to Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM -5) is the feeling of generalised worry and increase tension and other somatic feature as a response to a stressful stimuli.
Social phobia is a certain fear that the person will be negatively judged by others, so they avoid living their house
Panic disorder which is characterised by uncontrollable and unexpected attacks associated with somatic features.
Obsessive compulsive disorder, which is defined by repeated and persistent thoughts over something that will cause an uncontrollable need for the person to make some compulsions (rituals).
All these anxiety disorders arise from the persistence and uncontrolled pathological stress that is gathered on our body and mind. It is important for everybody to be informed about the symptoms of these disorders in order to be able to seek help and find their own point to health. A disorder may develop when the symptoms of anxiety become disrupting and impair one's functioning in their everyday life (Taylor & Whalen, 2015).
As a result the bottomline of how to separate the pathological with the physiological anxiety is first of all to observe yourself and see how a situation stresses you and how can this intrude on your daily functioning. Furthermore, it is important to realise that some situation such as talk in front of a lot of people or perform in front of an audience or giving an interview are of course stressful events that is normal to feel anxiety and that often anxiety is actually helpful.