Topic: AnxietyDefinition
Anxiety is a multisystem response to a perceived threat or danger. It reflects a combination of biochemical
changes in the body, the patient's personal history and memory, and the social situation. As far as we know,
anxiety is a uniquely human experience, that animals do not appear to have. Human anxiety involves an ability,
to use memory and imagination to move backward and forward in time.
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Anxiety description
Anxiety is a commonplace experience that everyone has from time to time, it is difficult to describe
concretely because it has so many different potential causes and degrees of intensity. Doctors sometimes
categorize anxiety as an emotion or an affect depending on whether it is being described by the person
having it (emotion) or by an outside observer (affect). The word emotion is generally used for the
biochemical changes and feeling state that underlie a person's internal sense of anxiety.
Affect is used to describe the person's emotional state from an observer's perspective. If a doctor
says that a patient has an anxious affect, he or she means that the patient appears nervous or anxious,
or responds to others in an anxious way (for example, the individual is shaky, tremulous, etc.).
Anxiety is related to fear, it is not the same thing. Fear is a direct, focused response to a specific
event or object, and the person is consciously aware of it. Anxiety, on the other hand, is often
unfocused, vague, and hard
to
pin down to a specific cause.
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