Chronic Anxiety Disorder Signs & Symptoms

Many of us experience anxiety when we encounter stress-inducing events. In that sense anxiety is a very biological response. But then in some instances, some people experience too much anxiety to the point that it cripples them. Such people are said to have chronic anxiety. When left unchecked, chronic anxiety can be debilitating. But the first and most important step is to recognize that you have this condition. The following signs indicate chronic anxiety in a person. 

Extreme Worry

There's nothing wrong with exercising a little caution in your day-to-day life. But if it manifests as a rigid pattern of unfounded worry then there's a problem. Some people have a hard time leading a peaceful existence because of the rigid thoughts of worry going on in their minds. They can run into a simple problem like a tire burst and that is enough to ruin their entire day. People who worry excessively have a tendency to magnify small matters and making them seem like such a big deal. This holds them back from leading a fulfilling life. In order to ascertain that indeed you suffer from extreme worry, you must witness these symptoms for at least six months. Having the tendency of worrying excessively will without a doubt affect you negatively. It causes you to make self-inhibiting decisions and develop a tendency of running away from your issues. 

Extreme worry causes you to miss out on many opportunities because you are much too careful and it might turn people away from you. 

Agitation

Sufferers of chronic anxiety have a tendency to bulging out of agitation. Their brain may respond to worry by preparing them for a fight. Thus, it diverts resources from various important organs and allocates these resources toward developing rigid muscles. This puts the person in an agitated state. A sufferer of chronic anxiety might seem to be always in a bad mood and as though they are about to get started on a fight. 

Thanks to their agitation, such people hurt their chances of integration into society, which usually affects their status in society. Of course, society won't like it if you are the sort of person to threaten other people and to make others feel as though they are walking on eggshells. Also, being easily agitated may put you in many undesirable situations because of threatening other people's egos, which isn't usually a great thing. In worse cases, agitation might cause you to alter your core beliefs, and give room to negative thoughts patterns. If you are the sort of person to become easily agitated you might end up thinking that all human beings are indeed nasty beings and shun people from your life, which will achieve nothing but hurt you in the long run. 

Restlessness

A restless person tends to feel as though they are on edge. They cannot concentrate on what they are doing because they are battling against a feeling of being unsettled. Restlessness is particularly common in teens and young adults that are battling chronic anxiety. Teenagers and young adults are especially hard hit with chronic anxiety because they are still in that developmental stage and there are many events to stimulate them. For instance, if they are in college or high school, the social pressure can be immense and cause them to be restless. This restless behavior hinders them from being productive and accomplishing their important life goals. 

Additionally, restlessness causes people to take self-inhibiting decisions, and also holds them back from thinking through their decisions, which can have a negative effect on the quality of their lives. When someone feels restless, they tend to want to isolate themselves, which can gradually invite loneliness into their lives. But then again, not every sufferer of chronic anxiety will struggle with restlessness. 

Exhaustion

In as much as anxiety is associated with extra-arousal and hyperactivity, some victims tend to experience exhaustion as well. The link between exhaustion and anxiety is largely down to the victim's personality. For instance, if a person is an introvert, they will process their chronic anxiety by thinking about it extensively, which is a resource-intensive exercise. Thinking about stuff that bothers you for an extended amount of time can cause you to deplete your energy, thus developing exhaustion. Also, when chronic anxiety leads to issues like insomnia or muscle tension, they will take a toll on an individual's energy reserve, and cause them to battle with low energy levels. Once exhaustion kicks in as a result of the individual's struggle against anxiety, it can affect their life in a myriad of ways. For one, it keeps them from being productive, and by extension, it can hurt their wellbeing. Exhaustion might also cause a person to develop a self-inhibiting mentality as they are in doubt of their potential. 

In the long run, this condition might keep one from reaching their important life goals, because they are at risk of losing their motivations. 

Lack of Focus

Studies reveal that one of the first casualties of chronic anxiety is focus. Most people who are battling chronic anxiety can hardly concentrate on the tasks before them. 

This explains why students who battle anxiety have a hard time performing in class. Before you can accomplish any endeavor, your mind ought to be operating from a relaxed point, else you will lose the energy to focus on your important life goals. Without focus, it doesn't matter that you are skilled or resourceful, but you are likely to fail short of your goals. This is because anything worth achieving takes hard work, which promotes the skill of concentration. Once you begin experiencing anxiety, your brain gives that matter huge importance, and it denies the concentration so that you might first address the root cause of your anxiety. Most people struggle to keep their focus afloat against the judgment of their brain and this usually leads them to become extremely conflicted. It is only logical to first address the anxiety issues and then your brain will become supportive in increasing the skill of focus.    

Irritability

In more than 90% of cases, people with chronic anxiety tend to be irritable. It would be hard for an extremely anxious person to keep a calm attitude. Their anxiety causes them to feel as though the world is conspiring to hurt them. This causes them to keep their guards up. Anxious people tend to be extra sensitive to words and nuances and they go deeper than everyone else in trying to glean meaning. What might sound normal to the average person might be offensive to the anxious person, thanks to their tendency to think hard on matters, reading cues that had not been implied. Irritability is one trait that holds people back from experiencing fulfillment. And this is down to the fact that it antagonizes people. An irritable person is likely to have many enemies and develop a bad reputation in society. Being irritable can frustrate many aspects of the victim's life, and eventually cause them to develop a negative attitude toward other human beings. 

Muscle tension

Another outcome of chronic anxiety is the development of tense muscles.

 Of course, not everyone battling muscle tension suffers from chronic anxiety. But the explanation is that the excessive worry attributed to anxiety causes the body to experience difficulties in normal functioning. Thus, the tendons become stiff and result in muscle tension. What's interesting is the fact that the treatment of muscle tension through various relaxation exercises tones down the anxiety. Chronic anxiety tends to have an adverse effect on more than one area of an individual's life. With sore muscles, the individual is discouraged from moving about, which is an ambitious move on the brain's part to make the person face his problem. Muscle tension denies the victim the peace of mind to function in a normal capacity. They find themselves having to rely on external support, and if the circumstances prolong, it can be incredibly underwhelming. 

Insomnia

This is a common sign of chronic anxiety. There's a strong link between chronic anxiety and an inability to sleep. For one, the excessive worrying puts the mind on overdrive and this denies the victim the chance to fall asleep. Also, chronic anxiety might meddle with an individual's physiological makeup and result in lack of sleep. But this situation puts the victim at a huge disadvantage considering that sleep plays a huge role in an individual's wellbeing. One of the main ways that lack of sleep affects an individual is by lowering their productivity.

Assuming your job demands watchfulness, like a driver or a plant operator, you would not be in a position to deliver great results, since your lack of sleep would get in the way. Lack of sleep would affect your cognitive abilities. This results in you being unable to reach the summit in regards to your potential. Extensive sleep loss can affect your capacity to partake tasks that demand sharp critical thinking capacity. In the long run, subpar performance may affect your capacity to build a good reputation in your line of work.

Lack of sleep would be a gateway to a host of other health complications such as heart failure, high blood pressure, stroke, and diabetes. One of the major problems of chronic anxiety is that it triggers a compounding effect on your failing health. Loss of sleep, which is born of anxiety, causes the development of illnesses, which end up scramming off whatever little health you had. 

Thus, it is critical to get rid of chronic anxiety as fast as one can. 

Panic attacks ...