Understanding Anxiety

 "Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained." - Arthur Somers Roche

Are fear and anxiety the same?

Fear is a response to realistically anticipated danger and anxiety is a response to perceived danger. 

The Anxiety Mechanism

Anxiety is nature's innate security mechanism. When a person faces a threat, there's an adrenaline rush that fuels and aids the instinct to either challenge the threat or escape.  Our autonomic nervous system has 2 branches the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. They each have a very specific role to play in this fight/flight response. Now let's take a look at these mechanisms.

Sympathetic Nervous System

When an individual faces a threat, the sympathetic nervous system activates physiological, behavioural, and cognitive changes. These changes help the person deal with the threat appropriately.

1. Breathing: Quickening of breath decreases blood supply to the brain.  This may result in dizziness, breathlessness, tightness in chest, blurred vision and a surreal feeling. The change in breathing rate also results in the tissues getting the extra blood they need for the fight or flight.

2. Redistribution of Blood: In emergency situations, we try to temporarily redistribute our resources to where they are most needed. The same thing happens in our body.  The blood flows away from areas like our fingers, toes, skin and into the muscles and organs that need it most.  This is the reason for the chillness, numbness or tingling sensation in our hands and feet when we get anxious.

3. Decreased Digestive Activity:  The decrease in digestive facilitates the diversion of energy to areas actively participating in the fight or the flight. Side effects to decreased digestive activity can range from dry mouth, heavy stomach to constipation.

Behavioural Changes: When confronted with a dangerous situation, our response, be it emotional or physical, would be to either become aggressive or escape the situation. In primordial days, this response was necessary for the very survival of our species.

Cognitive Changes: There's a shift in attention and focus is on the source of danger.   This shift helped ancient man to focus all his energies on the danger at hand.  We see this behaviour even today.  When we are anxious it is difficult to focus on anything but the perceived threat.

Parasympathetic Nervous System

Once the danger is past, the Parasympathetic system takes over and sets in motion a series of restorative process. The body eases into its normal relaxed state. The breath and the heart rate become normal once again.  Body temperature becomes normal.

However, some arousal remains for a while even after the danger is past. It would have been foolish for our hunter-gatherer ancestor to relax completely so quickly.  So, the keyed up feeling remains and only gradually tapers off.

The fight/flight response explains how nature has designed anxiety to protect us.  Therefore, it is important to remember that anxiety by itself not a bad experience.

When Does Anxiety Become A Concern?

Anxiety in some people gets activated even though there is no real threat. 

For Ex: 

Mr. A attends the wedding of his college friend's daughter. He hears of the death of another friend. This friend had a high BP.

This news triggers a series of thoughts in Mr. A. He too has high BP. He has a daughter in college and another in still in school. He's the sole bread winner. He suddenly has the thought, "What if I die tomorrow?" (danger)

He starts losing sleep. His poor sleep keeps him drowsy all the time. He is no longer able to focus on his work...

Anxiety becomes a serious concern when it interferes and impairs the day to day functioning of the person.