Can Anxiety Be a Negative Factor? Essay Example

Anxiety comes with feelings of fear, worry, and in many cases is considered as a mental disorder. Anxiety is common in individuals due to everyday chores. However, chronic or prolonged anxiety may be detrimental to one's health in addition to the quality of life. At the same time, anxiety may lead to serious physical and social life of an individual. Considering the many risk factors associated with chronic anxiety, it is no doubt that it has a negative effect on an individual. These include terror attacks, behavioral transformations, ill health, clash, and flight reaction, in addition to nervous system complications (Wells 23). At the same time, anxiety is a contributing factor in cardiovascular complications and changes in addition to digestive and excretory system upset. While the above consequences majorly affect the mental and physical aspect of an individual, anxiety is also known to impact negatively on ones social lifestyle with the resulting effect of poor social skills and abilities. It is no doubt that anxiety is detrimental and a contributing factor to poor health and good living pointers to negative factors in ones life.

Anxiety is described by an unwelcome mental state of turmoil often coming with nervous feelings of unknown fear, threat, and unidentified expectation of danger. While these feelings may be healthy while undertaking some activities such as skydiving or an exam, prolonged and chronic occurrence may result in negative effects that may include restlessness, poor concentration, weariness, and lack of confidence. Many a time, these symptoms result into life apprehension leading to a life of total disorganization and mismanagement. It is no doubt that with negative feelings associated with anxiety, an individual cannot perform to their level best and may be prone to mistakes and poor judgment. According to Wells (13), prolonged and persistent anxiety may be a pointer to mental disorders such as personality disorder, depressive disorder, eating disorder, and bipolar disorder. The above psychological complications have the impact of changing ones lifestyle, distorting ones perception, and ending a life.

According to Wells (21), anxiety is associated escape from reality, defensive behavioral conducts, flight or fight reaction, in addition to uncontrollable realism towards others and issues. At the same time, persons with prolonged and chronic anxiety gradually develop unstable mood states and the inability to cope with negative life incidences such as death. Anxiety, therefore, has the chances of causing negative factors in one's life and if not detected and treated early, may cause irreversible damage to an individual's life and lifestyle. Some of these thoughts may induce negative mentality of suicide attempts, dying, social withdrawal, increased food intake, and body tension. Emotional feelings associated with anxiety such as poor concentration, tense feeling, irritability, restlessness, and anticipation of danger have the chance of changing one's positive perception to that of scary feelings. Such negativity and poor physiological effects have the damaging effect of negativity in one's lifestyle.

Anxiety and especially prolonged and chronic anxiety could, therefore, lead to negative effect on one's life with the resulting impact of poor living and lack of control. While some of the effects may only last for a short while in some cases such as negative perception of an incident, the resulting psychological effect may go beyond the surface and contribute negatively towards living a positive and focused life (Wells 34). Many a time, individuals prone to anxiety have distorted personality attitude towards life and others in general, a factor that may hinder one from making a positive contribution to the society.

Works Cited

Wells, Adrian. Cognitive therapy of anxiety disorders: A practice manual and conceptual guide. John Wiley & Sons, 2013.