If you feel anxious about something, is that anxiety?

[TheTigerWriter]

If you’re familiar with my posts, you know I rarely post personal things. I like to keep my personal life and writing life separated for the most part, but sometimes I feel a need to talk to other people out there. Not really looking for advice. More like looking for some eyes to read this and some words responding to the question in the title.

So, sometimes I feel anxious about all the things I need to do and get this weird sense that I have to rush things while feeling overwhelmed and not wanting to rush things.

These contradicting feelings often come up when I haven’t had a break to do anything other than the things I need to get done. And sometimes, they pop in out of the blue. Or rather, I think it’s out of the blue. I might not be aware how much I’m piling up.

You could say that maybe I’m just overwhelmed. And maybe that’s all it is. I get overwhelmed pretty easily I work on it, but sometimes I can’t because you know, I’m only human

When I’m feeling these overwhelming and want-to-rush feelings, since I do live at home at the moment, I tell my mom who is the person that I always go to for anything to do with feelings and recently, idk why, but she’s been saying “It’s anxiety”.

But I’m not entirely sure I have anxiety as in clinically diagnosed anxiety (no one has diagnosed me). Not saying that I would hate it if I did in fact have anxiety (might be good because then I’ll know exactly what to do with it). I’m saying that I’m not sure that any time I feel anxious about something I can conclude that it’s anxiety.

Can you just be anxious and not have anxiety per say? But idk what anxiety is supposed to feel like compared to what typical anxious feelings are like. I don’t even know if those two feelings are actually the same feelings.

These feelings could also be related to my OCD. I’m saying this because the only thing a psychological doctor has told me is that I have very mild OCD.

I could just be anxious and not have anxiety, right?

But the sort of issue here, I guess, is that I also get anxious because I don’t know where these feelings are specifically coming from (as in, what part of my to-do list is freaking me out) and why I’m feeling this way about it now and not before.

I don’t like to just feel things. I need to know where it’s coming from XD I’m too curious about everything.

Idk where I’m going with this. Maybe if you comment, you could answer the question that is the title of this post.

Thanks for reading my ramblings

[Novel_Worm]

I’m not an expert, but based on the research I’ve done on mental health and disorders, anxiety disorder is a spectrum - like most other things. It’s not that you have it or you don’t - it can just be that the signs show up at certain times in life when stress is high.

[ToriHope]

Anxiety is one of those weird things were it’s pretty much just an emotion that shows up to tell you that you need to change how you’re going about things, or to tell you that you’re about to be in a bad situation. Put too much on your plate? Anxiety is there to help you realize that you have a too much on your plate and you need to 1) get to working on it, and 2) stop adding stuff to your schedule because you’ve hit your max or are about to. It’s your body’s natural way of telling you that you need to slow down and start thinking about how you’re going about things - it just does a bad job at it xD because thinking about things (rationally) when you’re anxious is so difficult lol. So it’s super normal to feel, especially when you’re stressed. And that contradictory feeling is super common too. It’s like your rational mind and your anxious mind clashing.

It won’t really cross over into an anxiety disorder unless it’s disordering your life or affecting the people around you - at least that’s what I’ve learned from psychology classes in college. So some examples of this would be the anxiety is preventing you from living a normal life, you find yourself avoiding your work so you don’t feel anxious about it which results in you not getting it done which results in other people not getting what they need to do their work, etc., or even if it’s just bothering you that you feel it a lot. That’s what a therapist would look at if you brought it up to make sure you have the tools you need to make sure those things don’t happen, or that when you do, you’re prepared to work with it. And like Novel_Worm said, anxiety is a spectrum, and it touches almost everyone at one point in their life.

HealthyGamerGG on YouTube has a bunch of really cool videos about topics like this. He explains things in a really interesting way that’s easy to understand and it’s very informative and interactive. You might find his videos interesting to look up if you want to learn more about it

[DomiSotto]

@TheTigerWriter

I could just be anxious and not have anxiety, right?

Yes. My daughter is diagnosed with severe generalized and social anxiety and it’s far more than just being anxious. There are physical manifestations you can’t miss when you have an anxiety or panic attack. It doesn’t hurt to talk to a specialist early though and get cooping strategies before it progresses too far.

[J.L.O]

different perspective

Anxiety serves a normal purpose. It’s what warns you to step back from the hungry tiger. You’re supposed to have that feeling. It also spurs you on to work. Anxiety reminds people to plant food so they can eat.

I come at this from another angle than labeling every single thing under the sun. I’m an older generation.

Where I worry about things is “loss of functionality”. You could panic 24/7 and still get things done? Then you’re functional. You panic once and your go curl up in a ball, ready to never been seen again? You’re not functional.

That being said: there is way more to it than that. Like stress factors in weight gain. There’s something like 6 points and if you regularly meet 3 of those, it’s not healthy. So, you may work on anxiety to lower weight gain while being a “fully functional” anxious person.

If this isn’t critical or urgent, then it’s not a worry for today, but more of a “tomorrow worry”. As in, you do need to track it for overall mental health, but it’s likely not going to be productive to focus on it right at the moment.

But if something is seriously out of whack? That may be the point of seeking help. All we can do is commiserate.

Again, personally: the more I focus on a negative, the worse the negative becomes because I’m feeding the wrong behavior. I’m far more anxious when I dwell on anxiety.

And that’s another factor. If I clearly can choose how much I focus, I probably won’t get diagnosed with anything.

[lowarlo]

You can be anxious and not have an anxiety disorder. OCD is an anxiety disorder, some of what you’re experiencing could be because of that–or not.

From what I’ve been told, if it has a big impact on your day-to-day life, like if it effects the way you socialize, you’re avoiding situations because of it, etc. it’s definitely time to see a doctor.

However, it’s always great to learn how to cope with anxiety, even if you don’t have an anxiety disorder. If you feel that you need some help managing it, that’s no problem and you don’t have to put a label on it if that’s not what you’re comfortable with at the time.

Personally, I experience generalized anxiety disorder, so I’m not sure if I’ve ever experienced anxiousness the way people without my disorder experience it. But from what I’ve gathered from researching and talking about it with others, an anxiety disorder causes a chemical reaction in the brain that triggers a flight or fight response. Why an anxiety disorder itself is a spectrum, some experiencing it mildly, others experiencing it greatly, it’s a disorder for a reason. It negatively impacts your life, and you need help to deal with it. For other people, who experience regular levels of anxiety, it’s easier to talk themselves out of, or to handle and rationalize it, because they’re not constantly feeling that way.

So, basically, it’s consistency, magnitude, and ofc how it’s impacting the way you interact with your day-to-day life.