There are many ways an anxiety disorder can affect your life. Anxiety essentially means you are under perpetual stress, as if you are being threatened. This can cause many kinds of problems. An anxiety disorder can affect your life, brain function, health, social activities etc.
These disorders include generalized anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, specific phobia, social anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and separation anxiety disorder. While it’s normal to get nervous sometimes, especially before important events, an anxiety disorder is a completely different matter. People with anxiety disorders may feel anxious most of the time for no good reason or they may become acutely anxious about particular things.
Patients that have emotional symptoms are just as weaken and include constant worry, terrible, inability to relax, spinning thinking, racing thoughts, negativity and projected negative outcomes, fixation on thoughts surrounding safety or death, having a looming dark cloud over one’s head, feeling hopeless about the future and at times feeling like one is losing their mind. These thoughts are often all-consuming and inescapable and are difficult to control.
HEALTH:
Everyone has anxiety from time to time, but chronic anxiety can interfere with your quality of life. If it gets too intense, however, you might start to feel lightheaded and nauseous. An excessive or persistent state of anxiety can have a devastating effect on your physical and mental health.
DIGESTIVE SYSTEM:
Anxiety also affects your digestive system. You may have stomachaches, nausea, diarrhea, and other digestive issues. Loss of appetite can also occur.
An anxiety disorder may worsen irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn’s disease. Ulcers were once thought to be caused by overactive stomach acid from stress, but have since been found to be caused by bacteria. However, chronic anxiety can also impair your immune system, making you more prone to ulcers.
IMMUNE SYSTEM:
Anxiety can trigger your flight-or-fight stress response and release a flood of chemicals and hormones, like adrenaline, into your system.
In the short term, this increases your pulse and breathing rate, so your brain can get more oxygen. This prepares you to respond appropriately to an intense situation. Your immune system may even get a brief boost. With occasional stress, your body returns to normal functioning when the stress passes.
But if you repeatedly feel anxious and stressed or it lasts a long time, your body never gets the signal to return to normal functioning. This can weaken your immune system, leaving you more vulnerable to viral infections and frequent illnesses.
CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM:
Anxiety disorders can cause rapid heart rate, palpitations, and chest pain. You may also be at an increased risk of high blood pressure and heart disease. If you already have heart disease, anxiety disorders may raise the risk of coronary events.
QUALITY OF LIFE:
Quality of life is probably the biggest way an anxiety disorder can affect you. To have an anxiety disorder is essential to live in fear, and often in fear of nothing in particular.
That is unpleasant in itself, but it can also limit you in other ways. Anxiety makes it harder to try new things, to take risks in your work or personal life, or sometimes to even leave your house.
Many people with anxiety feel caged in. They see things they want to do in life, but their anxiety keeps them from trying. This can lead to loss of income and unfulfilled potential.