Anxiety Disorders - What are they all about?

We all suffer from anxiety from time to time, but how do we know when typical stress goes beyond to something known as Anxiety Disorder?

Anxiety is a real psychological and physiological state. There are emotional and behavioral components that combine to create all those horrible feelings associated with what we associate with anxiety; fear, worry and apprehension.

The physical state of anxiety brings symptoms of heart palpitations, muscle weakness, tension, fatigue, nausea, chest pain, shortness of breath, stomach aches, or headaches. Some people think these symptoms are all “in the head” of the anxious person, but believe me, they are real and when severe, can feel life threatening to the sufferer.

As students, the anxiety you are probably most familiar with is the widely talked about “Test Anxiety”. Everyone probably experiences some form of this anxiety at one point in their lives. Fear of embarrassment by a teacher, time pressures, feeling of failure, sweating, dizziness, headaches, racing heartbeats, nausea, and fidgeting are all common ailments of someone suffering from test or performance anxiety.