Depression and anxiety: symptoms to be able to recognize them

The seat of emotions is in the brain, and not in the heart, as part of literature and art in general proclaim. Specifically, in a series of neural circuits, mostly buried deep within the brain, commonly known as limbic system or paleomammal.

In fact, all psychological pathologies known to man are characterized by an emotional deficit or excess. That is, mental illnesses can basically be defined as affective states that for some reason, escape their normal range.

In turn, this emotional deficit or excess is caused by different chemical imbalances and dysfunctions in the regions of the limbic system and other adjacent zones that participate in the supervision and regulation of the state psychic. Then we will see the symptoms associated with depression and anxiety, two of the emotional states most associated with disorders.

Symptoms of emotional maladjustment in depression

The Depression is characterized by the exacerbation of some emotions that, in their fair measure are beneficial for the person, such as

sadness, the guilt and shame. Who suffers from this problem, You enter a state of deep sadness that leads you to cry or feel distressed for much of the day. As a corollary, he begins to blame himself for what is happening to him, and is distressed at worrying his friends and loved ones.

Convinced that he has become a heavy burden on his family, the feeling of shame is triggered and many times the patient depressed he begins to think that the best thing that could happen to him is to die, since the disease prevents him from seeing a horizon more or less promissory.

Of course, usually none of this is true. What happens is that the confusion of these emotions, which deviate from the normal course of it, they end up clouding the normal reasoning process of the sick patient, altering his belief system, completely staining his perception, pushing him to think that he is a useless, reprehensible being, unable to fend for himself on his own, and that in As a consequence, it is expected that he ends up plunged into the most absolute social and economic ruin, abandoned by all those whom he loves, and delivered to the doom of his inexorable and fatal destination.

Symptoms in anxiety

Another psychiatric condition marked by uncontrolled emotions is what is known as generalized anxiety disorder. In this case, the preponderant feeling is the worry derived from fear, and the false certainty that something irremediably bad is about to happen.

As his name indicates, the person with generalized anxiety worries about everything, and what is worse, all the time; from the time he gets up until he goes to bed, he can't stop thinking about family, health, home finances, work and countless other issues mundane and day-to-day, such as that on the weekend he should go to the supermarket for his weekly grocery shopping, the possibility (without proof any) of what his partner is unfaithful, or what the neighbor who lives next door may have thought, who last week inadvertently forgot to say hello when he ran into him at the mall.

Constant, pervasive worry brings a person into a state of continuous vigilance, and it is easy to identify someone afflicted with this condition: are individuals who have become impatient, suspicious, complaining, accelerated, and that they live permanently on the defensive, since they believe that they must always be alert to prevent and avoid the imminent misfortunes that they believe life has in store for them.

Since they can never relax, they also cannot enjoy anything. Even activities that should be enjoyable like going to the movies, eating out, or the birthday party. a close cousin's birthday becomes a nuisance, a source of stress rather than satisfaction.

While the person with anxiety does not understand that most of his fears are unfounded, the picture tends to become chronic, and many times it enters what I call the "exhaustion phase", which is nothing other than a state of depression, a consequence of the frustration felt at the impossibility of controlling everything, and physical and mental fatigue that entails permanent monitoring of the many but unlikely threats, risks and dangers that the world.

Expanding the repertoire of emotions

However, What can we do to get rid of some illnesses such as depression and pathological anxiety? Well, a natural way to counteract the problem is by trying minimize sources of stress and maximize the range of pleasant emotions that we are capable of experiencing.

The effort of psychologists and psychiatrists is oriented in these cases to reestablish the normal emotional functioning of the patient affected by the disease. In this sense, it helps you productively manage your negative emotions, and to identify his positive emotions, so that he can enhance them and get the most out of them.

As soon as this is achieved, the way the individual perceives the world begins to improve. The environment is no longer a cold and threatening place; his reality is transformed, he becomes more affable. The combination of both strategies gives form to the best recipe to get rid of the disease and move towards personal well-being and happiness.