Did you know that the US has the third highest rate of anxiety?
What is it?
Is it our lifestyle or is it our brains?
Lifestyle
Our community ideals promote a lifestyle that is so focused on reaching a goal, and with that goal comes a promise of happiness. What we don’t consider is the stress related to achieving our goals and how we put so much stress on evaluations by our superiors. The constant stress form jobs, classes, or family/friends will contribute to anxiety and keep any of us on the edge.
The problem is that with our age, research shows that our anxiety and stress levels go up because of what we get worried about! As we age our stress shifts from our future to if we have lived our lives correctly. The problem is also that little things in life can increase our stress and therefore increase the chance of anxiety.
Brain
How is this anxiety processed? Well our brain goes from “rest and digest” which is our normal daily state while sitting around doing nothing. However, once a stressor is introduced, the brain signals the body to go into “fight or flight” which turns the body into an efficient machine that moves your energy from your gut out to your arms, legs, brain, and heart to help move your body away from the stressor.
The thing with stress is that there are two kinds:
Eustress (healthy): healthy stress that is naturally introduced to our bodies. For example, exercise. Eustress helps our body stay healthy and our mind to stay motivated towards our goals.
Unhealthy anxiety: can be as bad as panic attacks but its usually a series of unhealthy nervousness to the point of not having the ability to do work.
So realistically speaking science shows that stress from your lifestyle can affect our brains to giving us that constant nervousness called anxiety. We have an increased risk to anxiety by extra stress and depression they both cause a formation of negative memories that increases the amount of stress.
What’s With Your Anxiety?
