Do you think your anxiety is not normal? Do you know what it means to have pathological anxiety? Discover why and when anxiety becomes a problematic disease for your health.
Surely, there will be sense anxiety at some point in your life. However, we must keep in mind that there are several levels of anxiety and each one must be treated in one way or another. Anxiety is an emotion that all people have, whose main function is to prepare and provide the body with the necessary resources to successfully emerge from a situation perceived as dangerous.
When the anxiety is pathological It means that it is greatly exaggerated and disproportionate to the possible causes. In this way, when we react in a very disproportionate way to the phenomenon that produces anxiety, it may mean that we are facing an episode of already pathological anxiety. So much so that it affects both physically and mentally the person who appears to be this way, causing both worries and the physiological responses of anxiety to occur frequently.
Difference between normal and pathological anxiety
Anxiety is absolutely normal, it is neither bad nor harmful. The anxiety is negative or produces psychological disorders when it is of disproportionate intensity (anxiety or panic attacks), is triggered by situations that are not threatening (post-traumatic stress disorder and phobias), occurs too frequently or lasts for a long time (generalized anxiety disorder). In this way, we can find that anxiety has three components:
The cognitive component: It is what we think about a situation, whether it is dangerous or not. If the situation is subjectively dangerous, the other two components will be triggered, if it is not dangerous, it will not. will generate anxiety
The behavioral component: It’s what we do in a dangerous situation. We can fight physically and/or mentally, or flee from the dangerous situation In the event that we cannot fight or flee, we will remain paralyzed with a blank mind without being able to move or articulate a word, to go as unnoticed as possible.
The physiological component: They are the actions or resources that we launch in our body to carry out the behavioral component These actions may be sweating, increased sensory perception, tachycardia, shallow breathing, increased concentrations of antibodies in the blood, increased work rate of the kidneys, increased pain threshold, increased blood in the muscles, arrest of digestive function… These actions are completely automatic and involuntary, appropriate to the perception of danger and without the capacity for direct control by us.
When these three components are activated simultaneously and recurrently, we can say that we are facing a case of pathological anxiety In these cases it is vitally important to go to a psychology professional.
When does it become pathological?
We have all felt uncertainty at some point or that some sensation escaped our control, causing anxiety. But when this feeling gets worse and it is not something specific, we must be careful. There are 5 aspects to take into account to realize that we are not having a normal or healthy anxiety and it is something pathological.
Dysfunctional thoughts: They appear in situations where we think we are in danger suddenly. For example, a dog starts barking at us and we automatically get scared thinking that he will bite us.
Deterioration: Our anxiety It becomes so present in our lives that it prevents us from leading a normal life at work, friends, family or activities that we were used to doing regularly.
Persistence of danger and threat: When a person suffers from anxiety on a recurring basis, they are alert to any type of danger and often see threats where they really do not exist.
False alarms: Thinking negatively about any situation generates alarming emotions for us.
Hypersensitivity: When we are used to feeling in constant danger we become more sensitive to everything around us.
If we feel these five characteristics, it means that we are feeling pathological anxiety and that we need to be aware of what happens to us, reflect on it and find a solution with the help of a psychologist to help us manage it.
When the anxiety is pathological There are different ways to treat it to end this sensation. There are many different causes and types of anxiety disorders in which pathological anxiety can arise. For this reason, before looking for a solution we must know how these anxiety attacks occur and the causes of pathological anxiety.
Normally in the pathological anxiety The most frequent treatment is to go to a mental health specialist to be able to clarify why and the pathology of the disease. This will be done with different therapy options such as cognitive behavioral therapy to treat it more consciously or hypnosis to erase it. those unconscious thoughts that we cannot control
