Medical Facts About Anxiety You Need To Know

More Than Just Stress Or Worry

When anxiety becomes a medical condition, it's more than just stress or worry. It's normal to feel stressed in response to one's life circumstances. Maybe an individual has a relationship that's difficult at work, or they're worried about how they'll get everything done, or they don't have enough time for hobbies. All of these things add to stress. It's also normal for individuals to worry about situations they can control and situations they can't. Ceasing to worry is a behavior that takes active training of the mind.

Humans are hardwired to worry about situations as a survival mechanism. But serious anxiety is more than that. An individual's worry isn't proportional to the situation at hand. Anxiety also may cause affected individuals to avoid situations, have relationship troubles, cancel plans, and fail to meet conflict head-on. Anxiety causes distress and inhibits an individual's overall functioning, rather than being normal worry they can put aside when need be.

Causes Significant Difficulties Concentrating

Anxiety causes significant difficulties in concentrating. If an individual is struggling with anxious thoughts and feelings, they may notice their short-term memory is affected. They may also not be as productive as they usually are, which can seriously impact their functioning in school or at work. One of the reasons for this is anxiety interrupts an individual's ability to encode short-term memory into long-term memory. Thus, affected individuals are less likely to retain information they learn when they're anxious. When this impacts school or work performance, it can lead to further anxiety, causing a vicious cycle. Many individuals have little to no difficulty concentrating when they aren't anxious, but in stressful situations, they find their ability to focus is greatly diminished.