Knowing Your
Anxieties
Anxiety disorders also affect more than just physical symptoms and emotional symptoms. It can also affect how a person functions. What anxiety can affect is:
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Productivity
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Social Life
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Social Situations
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Mood
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Interactions in daily life
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People with certain anxiety disorders can also be pessimistic, and also have a streak of hypochondria in them, meaning they can think the worst and can think that when something is wrong, it's the worst possible thing. As an example if they get a sore throat, it could be strep or scarlet fever, and not something like sinuses draining.
People with anxiety disorders can also have aversions to past experiences or places, or thinking of the "what if"s. As an example, a person might have an aversion to go on vacation because of flying risks, thinking the plane could go down in the ocean, catch fire, etc. This can be done for many situations, from meeting someone, driving, flying, etc.
Interestingly enough, anxiety disorders are also very common in people who are creatively active, and have very active imaginations.
How does Anxiety Affect Others?
They ways anxiety affect someone varies from person to person, and not every case is the same. But some symptoms from different anxiety disorders can intermingle with each other. Common symptoms include:
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Sweating
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Nausea
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Lightheadedness
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Dizziness
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Aversion to an activity/place
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Urge to use the bathroom frequently
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Stomach clenching
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Shortness of breath
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Tingling arms or hands
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Stuttering
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Blurred Vision
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Tunnel Vision
In certain cases, like Generalized Anxiety or Panic Disorder, it can also give off a feeling that you, or the person, is going to die or have a heart attack. This is caused by the frequent tingling in the arms or hands, along with shortness of breath and focusing on the heartbeat.
Although in most cases it is anxiety related, there is a risk of it for the elderly who have depression/and or anxiety. This heightens their risks by about 34% if they have dealt with anxiety on a larger scale, or experience it in their old age.
The elderly can also have higher fall risks because of anxiety, and can develop cardiac problems because of it, or mixed with depression or other type of disorder.
What else does it Affect?
Anxiety Disorders can also show signs at a young age
In case studies, it shows that children who complain of stomach pains can develop anxiety later on in their life.
It can also influence their weight and make them more needy of comfort and junk foods to help ease anxiety and distract themselves, whether it be social, generalized, PTSD.
On a more emotional level, anxiety can sometimes also make a child strive for perfection because of parental or peer pressure. This can be in activities like sports, club activities, schoolwork and grades. This and weight tie into each other, and the child will feel useless if they can't be perfect, or constantly aim for perfection.
The good thing is, is that when a person does experience it, the sensation is just because of anxiety, and not something larger. Because of this, $22.84 billion dollars go to care for people who think they need medical attention, when it really is anxiety's effects.
