Anxiety - The most misunderstood thing ever.
If I had to make an educated guess, I’d say that anxiety is the most common thing that brings people to therapy. This isn’t surprising because feeling anxious is pretty yuck and people are generally motivated to do something about it. But from a broader social level anxiety is often a very misunderstood term. So, I’m here to offer some clarity.
Anxiety can refer to a singular feeling, “I feel anxious,” a broad collection of general symptoms, “I’m an anxious person”, or specific types of fears, “I have social anxiety.” It can be an adjective or a noun and the difference between these expressions is vast. One describes one hundred percent of the general population (to have a brain is to have anxiety), the other describes a much smaller percentage of people. To confuse these two things, is to paint two very different pictures.
IMO this happens because our social narratives around anxiety are quite limited. Often, we recognise categorical anxiety issues, i.e., people with phobias of birds or PTSD from bad events. But when it’s more subtle or generalised, we tend to be dismissive (sometimes I wonder if this is an Australian identity thing). I see people recognise it in their friends or loved ones, but sort of explain away, “she always been a worrier, it’s just her.” And I think because of this, we end up downplaying a whole bunch of symptoms which cause a lot of distress, but maybe don’t stop someone from going to work or school.
To add to this, psychologists are ALSO trained to look for anxiety which fits into neat little categories and reaches certain thresholds of “badness.” The diagnostic and statistical manual (a big book of diagnoses a psychologist can give someone) has tight parameters about whether someone should or should not be given a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder. For this reason, a lot of clinicians also misunderstand the subtle differences too.
So, let’s get some things straight. Anxiety can still be an issue, even if:
- You don’t have a specific fear
- Nothing particularly bad has happened, there wasn’t an identified traumatic event.
- You still manage to get to work everyday
- You still manage to get through your studies
- You still play team sports, hang out with friends, attend big events.
- You don’t avoid people/places/things.
Let’s stop erasing anxiousness as not important to talk about. Because *subtle* anxiety is still a monster that steals peoples joy and presence. It’s still a thing that causes people to be unreliable, indecisive, and sometimes hard to be around. It still gets in the way, even if others can’t see it.
Until next time,
Courtney
