Anxiety is a more complex term than what is commonly thought. It is regularly associated with acute feelings of fear and stress. Lewis (1970) has defined it as « an emotional state, with the subjectively experienced quality of fear as a closely related emotion ».
Freud is one of the most famous authors who have been working on the topic of anxiety, explaining it in very technical terms, using a psychodynamic approach. But nowadays, we mainly think about anxiety either as a trait, or a state. For Spielberger (1966) trait-anxiety is an individual predisposition to respond in an anxious way to some particular situations, and the state-anxiety is an emotion, a physiological reaction of arousal, experienced as a stressful situation is happening.
In common language, anxiety is a quite normal reaction that everyone can experience in stressful situations. But it can also become really disabling for some people, turning into what we call anxiety disorders. There are a wide range of anxiety disorders that have been defined and classified as mental illness. But the most famous and common of theses disorders is simple phobia, such as insectophobia for example. A lot of people suffer from this acute and uncontrollable fear that can concern a situation, an object, or more often an animal.
There are also other disabling disorders, such as social phobia, which includes a wide range of levels of fear concerning situations that are involving other people. We can also mention panic disorder, which is a repetition of panic attacks (defined by a sudden feeling of terror, associated with somatic manifestations as sweating, dizziness, and even a fear of dying). We can also mention as a disabling anxiety disorder OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), which is composed of obsessive thoughts that lead to repetitive actions that we call compulsions, in order to reduce the anxiety coming from these obsessive and fearful thoughts.
Another very invasive anxiety disorder is post-traumatic stress disorder. We can hear a lot about this disorder on television, mostly on thriller movies or series dealing with victims of agressions or rapes. But this disorder does not only concern physical agressions but what is subjectively experienced as a traumatic event for the person. After the traumatic event, the person will relive it day and night, during flashbacks including very powerful emotions or images. This causes a huge feeling of anxiety that can last for months, and sometimes even for years.
Finally, we can also talk about what is called generalized anxiety disorder, which is an expanded state of anxiety that impacts very negatively a person’s life, in almost every functioning sphere of his everyday routine. This implies an acute anxiety causing negative anticipation about the future and defeatism.
All those kinds of anxiety disorders can be treated using medication, and/or psychotherapy, depending on the kind of disorder and on the suffering it induces in the person’s life. Different types of medication can be used, and there are also different psychotherapies that can have very encouraging results in order to help people to cope with their anxiety and to understand the underlying reasons that caused their disorder.
Carre, A. (2011). Anxiety disorders. In L. Masse (dir.), Anglais pour psychologues (p.89-93). Paris : Dunod.
