Anxiety is a tough thing to deal with. A lot of people may not understand how crippling anxiety can be on a person's mind, and body. It seems that more people have anxiety than ever before. Why? Well, we live in a society that puts a huge amount of pressure on people. First off, if you want to even survive in this world, you need to be a gifted genius, or need to drown yourself in debt in order to get a degree. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves socially. In a pop culture world, we are influenced by media outlets that tell us we need to act a certain way or look a certain way just to be a "normal" human being. In most schools today kids are pressured by the standardized tests they have to take, but in reality they do not receive the proper education they need to survive in the real world. All of these issues can be touched on some more, but the point is, they can lead to major anxiety issues for young teenagers and adults. While we can look further into these examples (and many others) the point of this article is to evaluate what it is like to feel affected by these (and other) things, and what it is like to deal with anxiety.

So what is anxiety like? First of all, anxiety keeps your mind worried. Having anxiety means worrying about every little detail, or outcome of a situation. It keeps you up late at night, recounting every single mistake you can possibly make and makes you feel like those mistakes will haunt you for the rest of your life. With anxiety, you are worried about how every decision you make will affect your life ten years from now. You worry about the tests in school, and how you are gonna survive in the real world. You worry so much that you make yourself sick. Sometimes you begin to feel incompetent. You feel like you cannot function as a normal person, and you feel lesser than everyone else in the process. Having anxiety makes you feel like you are always on thin ice, and even the smallest mistake will send you drowning under the water.

Anxiety forces you to reevaluate your social life. If you have anxiety, you may worry about going out and interacting with other people. You may worry about how you look, talk, walk and just exist around other people. You end up focusing on every little detail in your appearance, and any little flaw you find (no matter how small) will annoy you all day long. It could be a strand of hair out of place, or a slight wrinkle in your shirt, or how you sound or walk. Any minor detail can set off your anxiety because you think people will notice. When in reality, they probably wont. But we live in a society where appearance is extremely important, so you hold yourself to high, ridiculous standards.

Anxiety can also be set off by sights and sounds. Loud noises, like thunder or fireworks can set off an anxiety attack. As well as sounds that they associate with bad memories or traumatic experiences. Noises can set off a fight or flight response in people with anxiety. Sights may also trigger anxiety for people. Large, crowded places, or heights can be frightening for some. But for a person with anxiety, that fear is doubled. This too may trigger a fight or flight response for people with anxiety.

Whatever type of anxiety a person may have, it can keep them from living a healthy, normal life. It brings about fear in ways people without anxiety may not understand. Anxiety amplifies fear, and causes people to worry their life away. Unfortunately, depression is often paired with anxiety. Depression makes it so that you feel worried, but may not have the strength to deal with the issue at hand. Depression and anxiety can leave you bed ridden, and locked away from the outside world. This is because you have the fear of failing, but the lack of energy to even try. Depression pulls you one way, and anxiety pushes you in another.

Treating anxiety, and or depression, takes a lot of time and patience. Most people need counseling in order to find the causes of their anxiety. They may also need medication in order to help if their anxiety is due to an improper chemical balance in the brain. All the while anxious people may need to take little steps, accomplishing things that to most people seem trivial. This can include going out to socialize, driving, or managing to keep your cool in a crowded setting. People with anxiety do not mean to have it, and they do not want to have it. They need support even for things that may seem simple, because to them that one simple thing might as well mean the entire world. Or the difference between living a normal life, or living under the thumb of their anxiety. But however long it make may take, anxiety is treatable, and anyone can overcome it and live a happy life.