Anxiety is a mechanism that the human body uses in certain situations to facilitate action in dangerous or critical situations. However, there are times or people who have more difficulty in dealing with it and in some cases it can become a serious problem for the physical and mental health of the individual. That is why throughout this article the types of disorder that exist, their risks and the situations in which it develops will be discovered.
In general circumstances, anxiety is generated when there is a situation of danger, alert or stress in the person’s environment. This is a double-edged sword , given in some circumstances it acts as an enhancer , that is, it puts the body in a situation of alarm and facilitates overcoming the problem. But in others it has the opposite effect : a partial blockage of the individual that can even disable the person who suffers it. The dangers or disorders of anxiety can be of two types: Physical or mental. The physical ones are the ones that a priori may have less danger, the mental ones being the ones that most favor the development of anxiety.
Also a high pace of life, tense situations at work or a strong argument with a loved one can be risk factors that enhance anxiety. A common characteristic of many of the people who suffer from it is the difficulty in explaining to a third party what is happening , if they have never been through a similar situation it is not an easy state of mind to understand, therefore many of people who suffer from it feel mostly misunderstood. Within the development of anxiety there are three factors that feed it: predispositional factors, activating factors and maintenance factors.
Predispositional
It refers to the facility that the individual himself can have to, in the face of adverse situations , develop behaviors or attitudes typical of people with anxiety-related disorders. Within this group are integrated all those factors related to the personality, character or education of the person . If you look closely, they are factors that somehow develop over time and usually third parties help to form them. These elements do not work as catalysts for anxiety in themselves , however, in possible anxiety situations they can be an aggravating factor. Someone with a less positive personality will have an easier time developing anxiety situations.
Activators
Within the activators we understand those behaviors , reactions or situations that can function as ‘wake-ups’ of anxiety . Since anxiety, as mentioned above, originates in principle as a defense mechanism, the activating factors are closely related to the same threat . The way in which an individual conceives his own problem is the first risk step for the development of anxiety. Some of the best weapons to combat this are optimism, pragmatism in solving problems, and knowing when to stop punishing yourself.
In short, anxiety-related disorders can occur for two main reasons: First, problems derived from not being able to finish processes or activities that the individual considers crucial , such as not passing an exam or not being able to avoid arriving late to an exam. important appointment. On the other hand, there are situations in which the person is at risk of conditions that they have previously achieved , such as losing their job or becoming seriously ill.
Maintenance
These kinds of factors come into play when the anxiety situation has not been known to treat and it continues to torment the person, sometimes it can lead to disorder . Once the state of anxiety arises between the predispositional factors and the activators , if it lasts for a while and is not eradicated, it can cause pathologies of a more serious nature to the person. Within this section are all those strategies that the individual adopts in order to improve the situation but, failing to do so, they aggravate or harden it. They are called self-defeating coping strategies .
It is a mistake to try to eliminate anxiety completely from the body, since in many cases it acts as an alarm mechanism that allows people to relate in time to critical situations. The objective to be pursued is to control the maintenance factors to eliminate the negative charges of anxiety and receive only the beneficial part.
