Is it normal to have anxiety for no reason?

There are many people who experience anxiety without knowing how to identify the cause of it. What to do?

Anxiety is one of the most common human experiences and is related to different psychic, Biological and social elements. In spite of being a common experience, anxiety can easily become an important condition of suffering. It is also an experience that is often confused with others (such as stress, anguish or fear), which also generate discomfort.

Ironically, the reasons why anxiety is generated; or rather, not knowing these reasons, is one of the triggering elements of anxiety. Next we will review different definitions of anxiety, and its relation with other similar concepts, to finally offer an answer to the following question: is it normal to have anxiety for no reason? Let's look at it.

Anxiety, fear, stress or distress?

Since the beginning of the 20th century, anxiety has been one of the main subjects of study in psychology and related areas such as medicine and physiology. The latter has generated the problem of accurately defining "anxiety", and from there to address it.and from there to address it adequately. Specifically in psychology, its different theoretical currents often face contradictions and overlaps with which anxiety has ended up mixed with anguish, stress, fear, fear, tension, and others.

In fact, in the diagnostic manuals themselves for the classification of mental disorders, and in their translations, anxiety has often been mixed with the concepts of anxiety, stress, fear, fear, tension, and others. has often been mixed with the concepts of distress, stress or fear, through which it is grouped together with the concepts of anxiety, stress or fear.through which different manifestations, both psychological and physical, are grouped together.

From anguish to anxiety

Psychologists Sierra, Ortega and Zubeidat (2003) have carried out a theoretical study where they invite us to reflect on this subject, and tell us that in some of the most classic definitions, the concept of "distress" had been related to the predominance of physical reactions: paralysis, awe and sharpness at the moment of grasping the causative phenomenon.. Contrary to "anxiety", which had been defined by the predominance of psychological symptoms: the feeling of suffocation, danger or startle; accompanied by the rush to seek effective solutions to the feeling of threat.

Regarding the latter, the authors tell us that Sigmund Freud had already proposed at the beginning of the 20th century the German term "Angst" to refer to physiological activation. This last concept was translated into English as "Anxiety", and in Spanish it was doubly translated into "angst" and "anxiety".

Anxiety is currently defined as a response that generates psychological tension accompanied by a somatic correlateIt is not attributable to real dangers, but presents itself as a persistent and diffuse state close to panic. It is related to future dangers, frequently indefinable and unpredictable (Sierra, Ortega and Zubeidat, 2003). In this sense, anxiety tends to paralyze, both by hyperactivity and lack of reaction.

It is an experience different from fear, because fear is presented before present, defined and localized stimuli, which is an experience that has a rational explanation, and that tends more to activate than to paralyze. In the same sense, anguish has been closely related to fear, because it is provoked by a clearly identifiable stimulus.. In both cases the person has a clear representation of the stimuli or situations that generate them.

From anxiety to stress

Finally, we have encountered the problem of differentiating between anxiety and stress. Some authors suggest that the latter concept has come to replace anxiety, both in research and interventions. Others believe that stress is now the term that refers to the physiological response, and anxiety is what relates to the subjective response. The term stress is perhaps the most difficult to delimit at present, as it has recently been used almost indiscriminately by many areas of study.

In any case, those who study it tend to agree that stress is an experience related to major changes in the person's environment; and to feelings of frustration, frustration, frustration, frustration, frustration, frustration and frustration.and feelings of frustration, boredom or lack of control. It is therefore an adaptive process that triggers different emotions and allows us to relate to the environment and face its demands. However, it is an experience that can also be generalized and that refers to the tensions that our societies are currently undergoing.

Anxiety for no reason?

If we summarize all of the above, we can see that feeling anxiety for no apparent reason is not only normal, but is a condition of the experience of anxiety itself. It is a situation that has a psychological origin and a physical correlate.Therefore, this lack can also be an objective of therapeutic work.

In this sense, and given that anxiety has recently been studied in relation to the physical correlate, there is an important part of psychology and medicine that have approached it as a multicausal phenomenon, where different triggering events can be identified. Psychic as well as social and physiological, for example, from traumatic events to frequent consumption of psychotropic substances..

If it is normal, is it avoidable?

As we have seen, there are experiences of discomfort that are part of human beings and that can be adaptive, both physically and psychologically. These are discomforts that manifest themselves at the psychic and somatic level, but which are not isolated.They are not isolated, but in permanent connection with the demands and characteristics of the environment.

The problem is when these discomforts no longer act as adaptive or stabilizing mechanisms, but are present in practically all the circumstances that surround us, including circumstances without concrete reality. This is a problem because, if the reason for the discomfort has to do with everything around us (even the most everyday and intimate), it easily generates the feeling that there is no end to it. That is to say, it generalizes.

This is when we are dealing with an anxiety that has become cyclical, which can cause permanent or repetitive can cause permanent or repetitive pictures of sufferingIt can also affect our daily activities, our relationships and our vital processes.

In short, anxiety can be a functional reaction of our organism, it can keep us alert to different stimuli, whether positive or negative. But, if it becomes a very frequent experiencecaused by a diffuse perception of danger in the most everyday situations, then it can generate significant suffering. However, this is a type of suffering that is avoidable and controllable.

One of the first things to do to counteract it, is precisely to attend to that feeling (psychological and physiological) of generalized threat, as well as to explore the apparent lack of motives that generate it.

Bibliographical references:

• Sierra, J. C., Ortega, V. and Zubeidat, I. (2003). Anxiety, distress and stress: three concepts to differentiate. Revista Mal-estar E Subjetividade, 3(1): 10-59.