All of a sudden, you either can’t breathe and begin hyperventilating. Once anxiety gets a hold of you, it doesn’t let go until it seems you lose a piece of your sanity. A condition, which is all too familiar, that consumes more than just your time. Anxiety is not an over-reactive response to stress, as some may understand from experience, contrary to popular belief. Suffering from it is limiting and controlling as your mind surrenders to the stress. Anxiety makes you feel a variety of unpleasant emotions, all at once.

1.Overthinking and Analyzing Everything

Your brain is on a constant loop of recycling the same thoughts repeatedly. You're flooded with emotions while our basic instinct is to overanalyze everything. Thinking the worst is human nature and sometimes impossible to divert once you have been consumed by the nervous nagging feeling that overcomes your body.

2.Getting Panic Attacks for No Reason

Sometimes you will wake up in the late hours of the night for no apparent reason yet, and immediately become nervous. The heart rate increases, you begin to perspire and occasionally even shake. I would rather be sound asleep like most of the rest of the world but when the anxiety catches up with us, sometimes these situations are unavoidable. The severity of these attacks may vary and can happen during the day. People can just be a little too good at hiding it, meaning that they unfortunately have a lot of practice with adapting to their stressful routine.

3.Getting Easily Discouraged

Feeling down about ongoing situations in your life is a regular occurrence for those suffering from anxiety. Most commonly, feeling low about yourself. Feeling that your worth is not up to the standards of those who mean most to you can be quite discouraging. This brings the bittersweet feeling of always wanted a change but never being able to commit to drastic differences.

4.Being Easily Overwhelmed

The build-up of excess energy and negative stress can suddenly become too much to handle. The tension is usually from trying to maintain yourself for too long without addressing issues. Being busy at work, stuck in traffic, relationship trouble, are all examples of how one can feel dramatically overwhelmed in the midst of their anxiety.

5.Feeling Irritated Towards Those Who Overlook Stress

I suppose it’s a good thing that not everyone will know what it’s like to be trapped in a condition in your mind. Anxiety sufferers often resent those who don’t understand their situation. As frustrating as it can be, it is relevant for us to realize that it is complicated for people to understand sensations they have never experienced. Situations like these require understanding and compassion on both ends.

Although anxiety and stress can be more of an issue than some think, luckily there are ways of combatting it. Exercising to burn off the extra adrenaline, listening to music, or even just talking with friends, can make a big difference in someone’s emotions. Understanding why someone feels the way they do will help communicate. Anyone who provides support for a anxiety sufferer, or the stressed out person themselves, I would consider some of the strongest minds.