Is it normal to have anxiety for no reason?

Anxiety is one of the most common human experiences and is related to different elements of a psychic, biological and social order. Despite being a common experience, anxiety can easily become a significant condition of suffering. Likewise, it is 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 triggers for anxiety. Below we will review different definitions of anxiety, and its relationship with other similar concepts, to finally offer an answer to the following question: Is it normal to have anxiety for no reason? Let's see it.

• Related article: "Types of Anxiety Disorders and their characteristics"

Anxiety, fear, stress or anguish?

Since the beginning of the 20th century, anxiety has been positioned as one of the main topics of study in psychology, and in related areas, such as medicine or physiology. The latter has generated the problem of accurately defining “anxiety”

, and from there address it appropriately. Specifically in psychology, its different theoretical currents often face contradictions and overlaps. with which anxiety has been mixed with anguish, stress, fear, fear, tension, and others.

In fact, in the diagnostic manuals for the classification of mental disorders, and in their translations, anxiety the concepts of anguish, stress or fear have frequently been mixed, through which different manifestations, both mental and physical, are grouped.

From anxiety to anxiety

The psychologists Sierra, Ortega and Zubeidat (2003) have carried out a theoretical study where they invite us to reflect on this topic, and say that in some of the most classical definitions, the concept of "anguish" had been related to the predominance of reactions physical: the paralysis, the awe and the sharpness at the moment of capturing the causative phenomenon. Contrary to “anxiety”, which had been defined by the predominance of psychological symptoms: the sensation of suffocation, danger or shock; accompanied by the rush to find effective solutions to the feeling of threat.

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

Anxiety is currently defined as a response that generates psychological tension accompanied by a somatic correlate, which is not attributable to real dangers, but which presents 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 due to hyperactivity and lack of reaction.

It is a different experience from fear, because fear occurs before present, defined and localized, with which it 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 is elicited by a clearly identifiable stimulus. In both cases, the person has a clear representation of the stimuli or situations that generate them.

• You may be interested in: "Sympathetic nervous system: functions and route"

From anxiety to stress

Finally we have encountered the problem of differentiating between anxiety and stress. Some authors suggest that this last 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 is related to the subjective response. The term stress is perhaps the most difficult to define currently, since 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 with feelings of frustration, boredom, or lack of control. It is then an adaptive process that triggers different emotions and that allows us to relate to the environment, as well as face its demands. However, it is an experience that can also be generalized and that refers to the tensions that our societies are currently going through.

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 anxiety experience itself. It is a situation that have a psychological origin and a physical correlateTherefore, said lack can also be an objective of therapeutic work.

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

If it is normal, is it preventable?

As we have seen, there are experiences of discomfort that are part of human beings and that can be adaptive, both physically and psychologically. Is about discomforts that manifest themselves at a psychic and somatic level, but that is 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 become present to virtually all circumstances around us, including circumstances without reality concrete. This is a problem because, if the reason for the discomfort has to do with everything that is within our around (even with the most everyday and most intimate), it easily gives us the feeling that it has no end. That is, it is generalized.

This is when it comes to anxiety that has become cyclical, which can cause permanent or repetitive episodes of suffering, as well as affect our daily activity, our relationships and our vital processes.

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

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 exploring the apparent lack of motives that generate.

Bibliographic references:

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