Anxiety

The psychological disorder anxiety affects about 25% of people. So, as there are roughly 311 million people in the US, about 77.75 million people in the US suffer from some sort of anxiety disorder, as there are many different types of this disorder. There's panic disorders, social phobias, simple phobias and generalized anxiety disorder. While most cases of anxiety are in women, there are some factors that may affect this. In our society, men are supposed to be seen as more stoic and masculine, while women are seen as vulnerable and fragile. Therefore, women and men may actually experience the same amount of anxiety, or men may in fact actually have more cases of it, but do not report it. However, there are also cases supporting that there truly is a larger population of women with anxiety than men. For example, women are more likely to be single parents, we're less physically able to defend ourselves compared to how men can defend themselves in a certain situation, and women face gender discrimination in work places far more often than males.


The disorder anxiety affects people in different ways depending on the type of anxiety exhibited by the person, however, the one type of anxiety I am focusing on now is the type I myself have, GAD, or General Anxiety Disorder. The things that commonly cause this type of anxiety is constant worrying. For me, I feel the need to be the best, like I have to be perfect, and when I cannot achieve this, or I feel like I'm going to fail, my anxiety begins, and I occasionally have anxiety attacks. However, my anxiety only gets to a point where it is hard to handle in instances such as in the beginning of my school year, I was at school from 7:20-6 four days a week, and 7:20-9 the other because of volleyball and marching band. When I begin to get anxious, my mind goes blank, so there's no hope of me doing any schoolwork, I'm extremely irritable and on edge, I'm tired all the sudden,  and I often have shortness of breath and have a hard time breathing if I am having a full out attack. These symptoms are common symptoms of a person who is suffering from anxiety. Also, some people have msucle tension and sleep disturbance. As a result from this, the next day after an episode of serious anxiety, a person usually looks very tired. Which, lucky me, I do. After a night where my anxiety is bad, the bags under my eyes are terrible.

Due to the fact that I have anxiety, I know that people with anxiety fit into society perfectly fine. Most people wouldn't even be able to tell apart a person with anxiety from a person who doesn't have anxiety, due to the fact that the only real thing that would show is the person's tiredness and possibly frequent worrying. Otherwise, people with anxiety don't have a difficult time at all fitting in with others from todays society at all. People with anxiety are normal functioning people just as everyone else.