Anxiety is a sudden and often intense subjective state associated with stress. It can help a person cope with a difficult situation, for example at work or at school, by prompting one to deal with it. When it becomes excessive, it may fit into the category of an nervousness disorder.
Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by emotional, somatic, cognitive and behavioral components. These components combine to create an unpleasant feeling that is typically associated with uneasiness, fear, or worry.
An anxiety panic attack often occurs without a visible pretext. As such, it is distinguished from panic, which occurs in the face of an observed threat. Furthermore, fear is related to the particular behaviors of avoidance and escape, whereas anxiety is the result of threats that the sufferer perceives as being uncontrollable or unavoidable.
A competing view perceives anxiety as “a future-oriented state of mind” in which one is prepared to attempt to cope with imminent negative events. This implies that it is a distinction between future vs. present dangers that divides anxiety and fear.
Anxiety can be accompanied by bodily effects such as heart palpitations, fatigue, nausea, chest pain, shortness of breath, stomach aches, or headaches. Physically, the body prepares the system to deal with a threat. Blood pressure and heart rate are intensified, blood flow to the major muscle groups is increased, sweating is increased, and immune and digestive system functions are slowed down (the fight or flight response). Outside signs of anxiety may include pale skin, sweating, trembling, and pupillary dilation. Someone suffering from anxiety might also feel it as a sense of dismay or terror.
In addition to the somatic symptoms, several emotional signs are involved also. Those are not limited to: “Feelings of apprehension or dread, trouble concentrating, feeling jumpy or tense, anticipating the worst, irritability, restlessness, watching (and waiting) for occurrences of danger, and, feeling like the mind’s gone blank”. There’s also, “bad dreams/nightmares, obsessions about sensations, deja vu, a trapped in your mind feeling, and feeling like everything is scary”.
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