Fear and Anxiety
Everyone in the world has experienced fear and anxiety. The commonality of these emotions is reflected in the myriad number of words used in our language to describe them - trepidation, fright, dread, terror, horror, alarm, panic, anguish, agitation, jitteriness, worry, nervousness, uneasiness, apprehension, wariness, defensiveness. These are just some of the nuances of fear and anxiety. A rich vocabulary rising out of thousands of years of human evolution in a world where physical dangers are ever present, and where threats to emotional and mental well-being seem to constantly harass our efforts to establish and maintain a peaceful existence.
In spite of the dangers, the human race has survived and progressed - the body evolving an efficient and effective alarm system - hard-wired into our autonomic nervous system, known as the flight and fight response, to ensure immediate action and increased strength and stamina in response to external dangers. In these modern times, external dangers still occur, but are less common on a daily basis for most people than was the case for our ancestors. More commonly today, the perception of threat is associated with matters of a psychological, emotional and social nature - for example, loss of love or social status, loss of capacity or ability to perform various roles, and loss of possessions or economic status. These types of 'threat' give rise to the more vague and ill-defined sense of impending danger that we term anxiety.
Fear and anxiety are a constant in this world, manifesting through our emotions, our bodies, our thoughts and imaginations. We need to feel some level of fear to ensure that we are alert and responsive to danger, and we can also effectively utilise some degree of anxiety - reflecting sensitivity to others, a regard for our own well-being, a motivating force driving us to achieve and perform to our best advantage. There is, however, a marked difference between the 'normal' experience of anxiety and the symptoms of anxiety disorders. Whereas normal levels of anxiety contribute to survival and effective functioning, higher levels of anxiety and associated cognitive and behavioural symptoms are distressing and debilitating, and reduce effective functioning.
For some people, anxiety becomes constant and intrusive, growing like a rampant weed, seeds of doubt permeating their thoughts, spreading deep and invasive roots in their minds. For these people, anxiety spreads and infiltrates to such an extent, that their experience of the world, of their sense of self, of their relationships, of their daily activities, becomes shadowed by a nightmare of overwhelming fear - seemingly insatiable, casting a fog over rational thinking, attacking, distorting and twisting reality. Here anxiety becomes a disorder, dysfunctional and distressing. Here is a person thrown into a battle with their own mind, struggling for control, seeking desperately for safety and relief from an ever present sense of impending doom and catastrophe.