If you want to know about myths and facts about anxiety, you are in the right place. Who doesn’t know what anxiety is? Who hasn’t faced it yet in life? Like this mental health issue is so common in our everyday lives. Every one of us has gone through anxiety at one point of time or another right? Even anxiety, stress and depression are all sometimes interrelated too. But do you know that there are a lot of myths that people still believe about anxiety?
So, this article is going to be about the myths and facts about anxiety. But before we start I’ll share some basics with you (as always) regarding anxiety.
What exactly anxiety is?
Intense, excessive and continuous tension or worry and extreme fear about the situations that we face in our everyday lives. Fastening of our heart rates, rapid inhalation and exaltation, sudden sweating is followed by anxiety.
What are the causes of anxiety?
Look, to be very honest, if you google up or read other articles then you will definitely find out a lot of reasons that may lead to anxiety. But anxiety is something that can happen at any moment at any time which can’t be controlled so easily. So personally, I don’t find the causes to be very specific. Any difficult situation which makes you think can often land you up directly into anxiety.
Let’s know about the symptoms too
Behavioural symptoms include: hypervigilance or extreme sensitivity or alert towards your surrounding, irritability, and even restlessness (this is so often faced by us, isn’t it? )
Cognitive symptoms include: lack of concentration, rapid consistent or persistent thoughts, and even unwanted thoughts (and let me tell you, that’s dangerous)
Other common symptoms include : fatigue and sweating
Even the other common symptoms that we all have personally come across during anxiety issues are excessive worrying about something, fear of losing, feeling of impending doom or what we call as a gut feeling of something negative to occur, insomnia (of course, mainly and specifically if you are an overthinker), nausea (well, this is my kinda thing), palpitations and nervousness leading to trembling of hands, legs and facial expressions.
Okay, so after you have read the basics, let’s get into the main topic of today’s article which is about its myths and facts. But as you already know, I only talk about the most specific points, so there are a lot more myths apart from these, but these are most commonly mistaken, so here I have come up with only these points.
Myth – Anxiety is self controllable
Fact – Well that’s partially true, but often we see that it’s not (even personally speaking). Whenever you are leading a stressful life or you an overthinker regarding every issue then facing anxiety issues is like in your everyday schedule. Yes, I’m exactly talking about those nauseatic feels of the dead butterflies in your stomach. It’s not easy to self treat anxiety if you don’t have strong nerves, and that’s nothing to feel ashamed about (because even I’m incapable of self-treating them when I face it). But yes, on the other hand, if you have strong nerves and know how to control them according to every situation, no matter how difficult it is, then please take a salute from my side. That is one of the myths and facts about anxiety.
Myth – There’s nothing such as anxiety
Fact – Seriously? Okay, so those who think so, please answer one of my questions – suppose you are in the middle of a group discussion in an interview and you see that you are the only one lagging behind to give an appropriate answer. Your heart is beating fast, you are making more mistakes due to more stress, you are being restless, you are feeling nauseatic, you are not able to listen to the questions properly anymore, you are losing your confidence, you are panicking – now you may say that’s because of nervousness, well, not fully, that has a proper scientific term known as anxiety. So you see, you need to educate yourself more. That is one of the myths and facts about anxiety.
Myth – Fainting during panic attacks is common
Fact – Well no, this is rare. Fainting during panic attacks happen mostly when you have heart-related problems ( just like Laura Biel had in 365 Days, just kidding). Though anxiety makes you feel like fainting or weak, in most cases you won’t. Also, you may feel nauseatic or even vomit if you have sudden severe panic attacks. That is one of the myths and facts about anxiety.
So these were the main myths that I’ve mostly heard in my life. The next time you see someone nourishing these myths inside their minds, please correct it immediately or ask them to self educate themselves. This generation suffers a lot from anxiety and most from anxiety. So they should be well aware of these things in order to help them out during a difficult situation. Hope you like this article and also find it helpful, and it made some difference to you.
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