Cause And Effect Essay On Full-Blown Anxiety

One of the most common misconceptions is that anxiety is something that everyone experiences. On some level, this belief is true. Anxiety is natural to feel in certain situations where danger is present, and the fight-or-flight instinct kicks in. However, the fine line is drawn when someone experiences anxiety when there is no discernible threat—this is when anxiety starts becoming a disorder and not just a natural response to the environment. Many people do not understand the effect anxiety has on the brain, and it is important to understand that to both diagnose and attempt to treat full-blown anxiety. There are nearly 40 million adults living in America that have anxiety. This means that a large population of the country experiences a disorder that can be restricted in his or her everyday life, but only around one-third of people with anxiety seek some type of treatment.
While the symptoms can vary depending on which form of the disorder a person has, some general symptoms are the feeling of fear, and the same reactions as having a rush of adrenaline, such as faster heart rate. The symptoms are generally very similar to stress, as they do activate the same “danger” response, but the difference is that anxiety can happen to just about any stimuli and can have a prolonged effect. It is not exactly known what precisely causes anxiety disorders to occur, but according to the National Institute of Mental Health, the amygdala and hippocampus might be largely involved in the process. The amygdala could be what is alerting the body to the threat of danger, and the hippocampus could be what is committing the fear of whatever the stimuli was to memory, thus creating a sort of loop where the body associates fear to whatever caused the initial response, such as something as mundane as being submerged in water to something as awful as fighting in a