What is ANXIETY? Anxiety is our body’s natural response to stress.
When a person is in any kind of danger, their brain perceives a threat and intensively prepares itself to either fight the danger or flee from it. However, this instinctive response sometimes kicks in even in the absence of danger. This is when anxiety is experienced. It is normal to feel anxious from time to time, especially if you live a stressful life.
While anxiety symptoms vary from person to person, in general the body reacts in a very specific way to anxiety. Whenever we feel anxious, our body goes on extreme high alert which can show some common symptoms of anxiety like sleeping disorder, nervousness, restlessness, being tensed, feeling of danger, insomnia and many more. Some can’t even recognize it, but we didn’t even know what anxiety can do to our body.
It can trigger our immune system, increase our blood pressure causing breathing problem, this case is intense while having panic attack. Suffering from Anxiety for a long time can even lead to depression (according to WHO data the age standardized suicide rate in India is 16.4per 100,000 for women which is 6th highest in the world and 25.8 for men ranking 22nd). There is a lot that anxiety can do to our body and can interfere in our relationship with friends and family.
Anxiety is the most common of all mental disorders- currently 1 in 13 people is affected (7.3 per cent). When it comes to worldwide, India is the most affected country by anxiety followed by China and United States, according to World Health Organization. In India there are more than 10 million cases per year. Now let us talk, why Indians suffers most from anxiety?... In this the most important role is played by our society. People have started looking themselves from other’s eyes. Social rules are strict in Indian culture; deviations in behavior often results in embarrassment, loneliness and guilt. This makes people so anxious that they start avoiding people, become introvert, never share their feelings and usually keeps overthinking for common things. The fear of constantly being judged, fear of getting low grades, fear of being alone, fear of what society will say etc. These insecurities may seem normal to the other person but may gradually go to horrible extents causing serious disorders.
So now it makes sense that- One cannot change the world but can change ourselves, which can change our life. It is only possible when more and more people get to know about anxiety, its symptoms and its effect on our health as well as in our life. There are many ways to cure anxiety – treatable by a medical profession, therapies, but the most effective is SELF CARE. By looking after yourself like building a strong body and mind, get enough sleep, avoid more time on social media and try to interact people in real life instead of virtual. Share your feeling and situations; be close to you family and friends. Practice meditation to reduce stress, get healthy diet. Always be in positive environment, where you feel confident about yourself and loving.
We all can fight with our anxiety just by loving ourselves; just stop to jam yourself into the molds other people make for you. Stop looking ourselves from other’s eyes. If something happens that makes you stressed or upset don’t hold it on.
“DEPRESSION, ANXIETY AND PANIC ATTACKS ARE NOT SIGNS OF WEAKNESS. THEY ARE SIGNS OF TRYING TO REMAIN STRONG FOR FAR TOO LONG”.
