An Unpleasant Emotional Experience Of Anxiety, Fear, And Dread Essay

Do all living things fear something? Those with minds surely have many and various fears, but even the simplest organisms must have fear, for fear is such a powerful feeling. Fear is all around us and is felt in every corner of the earth. Fear is the emotion or feeling that a living creature gets when its physical or mental life is interrupted by a change that causes the creature concern.

Peg O’ Conner offers evidence in her article by stating some of the common, daily mistakes people do. She claims that rejecting this anxiety is also rejecting our humanity and says that this ‘anxiety’ is part of who humans are (Conner). Conner does actively prove her point, but she requires logos to show her ethos. Much of the article is full of pathos, but Conner needs to include more logos to evaluate a stronger argument. Conner needs more proven statistics from different studies. She needs to have evidence from various sources to show that anxiety does, in fact, exist in everyone. Conner’s arguments are somewhat valid. She needs to include more logic in her article to make it more reliable. She does; however, offer some valid and credible points by providing what most-if not all- readers experience

Anxiety is a common occurrence and emotion in everyday life. Yet there are several individuals today who suffer from great pangs of anxiety and feelings of panic at such extremely high levels that it becomes quite debilitating. A normal, everyday environment can become so overwhelming that the day itself can stop dead in its tracks while the sufferer rides through the wave of intense emotions and thoughts which seem to be going a million miles a minute and showing no signs of stopping or slowing down.

In the peer reviewed article, “Perceived functions of worry among generalized anxiety disorder subjects: Distractions from more emotionally distressing topics?” the authors discussed how some people with anxiety have found their anxiety to be maladaptive in some ways, and beneficial in other ways. To summarize the six areas that were commonly found in persons with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) we motivation to complete tasks, problem solving, preparation for the worst case-scenario, planning to avoid negative events, distraction form emotional thoughts, and superstitions that fear and worry will prevent future negative events from taking place.

The book that inspired this piece focused on worry. One of the worries mentioned in the book is imagined fears, sometimes people worry about things that aren't real threats. It’s all in their head. My project focused on the idea of imagined fears. I made a hollow human head that has a bowl inside of it. One can write down their imagined fears down on paper and put them there so the fears are in someone else's head instead of their own. There is no way to face imagined fears except to realize they are not real, the head can serve as a process for taking those fears out of your head and realizing they are not real. The head can also serve as an altar. Imagined fears are the strongest fears people have because there is no way to face them except

Anxiety can generate a chronic stress response. However the frequent experience of worry or fear, and the wish to avoid these negative feelings, distinguishes anxiety from day to day stress. Anxiety is reinforced though experiential avoidance, the attempt to avoid any experiences (thought, feels, sensations or situations that might

Anxiety is a disorder in which an individual suffers from the inability to see past their immediate moment, without the fear of the unknown waiting for them. Scientifically speaking, anxiety is brought upon an individual by a chemical imbalance, which is explained by a neural pathway being blocked or disrupted, causing “emotional pain and irrational conclusions” (Richards, 2016). The broad term of anxiety cannot begin to scratch the surface of the disorder, however, it can be broken down into three main types: “general, panic, and social” (“Anxiety Disorders”, 2013). Whether they are conditioned to be anxious, traumatized as a child, or have severe social dysfunction,

Normal people experience anxiety in anticipation for an exam, job interview or risky event. Some experience anxiety vicariously by hearing about or viewing a fear-inducing event. The average person takes control over these situations by returning to normal once the threat passes. Others retreat from the world in order to quiet anxiety's persistent nagging when suffering from chronic anxiety. Chronic anxiety sufferers exhibit behavioural deficiencies, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, excessive shyness, unreasonable

The definition of anxiety is something not easily come by. Søren Kierkegaard, a famous Danish philosopher who was widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher, once written, “And no Grand Inquisitor has in readiness such terrible tortures as has anxiety, and no spy knows how to attack more artfully the man he suspects, choosing the instant when he is weakest, nor knows how to lay traps where he will be caught and ensnared, as anxiety knows how, and no sharp-witted judge knows how to interrogate, to examine the accused as anxiety does, which never lets him escape, neither by diversion nor by noise, neither at work nor at play, neither by day nor at night” (The Concept of Anxiety – Kierkegaard). In other words, Kierkegaard believes that anxiety is a malignant “torture” that causes people to suffer consistently from everyday life.

Naturally, every person has psychological weapons to protect against anxious feeling or threatening thoughts that will harm their mind or body. The ego is a powerful soldier that uses his weapons against the conflicting demanding between the “id” and the “superego” that can result in anxious feelings in a person. The ego powerful weapons are called “defense mechanisms”, it means “the process that the ego uses to distort reality to protect itself”, a theory developed by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic approach (Friedman, 2016). The defense mechanism acts to lower or deflect anxious feelings that treat a person, which some defense mechanisms will be explained below.

‘Anxiety is a negative aspect of experiencing stress. It is the worry that is experienced due to fear of failure’– Honeybourne (2003)

Coping strategies refer to the specific efforts, both behavioral and psychological, that people employ to master, tolerate, reduce or minimize stressful events. There are two general coping strategies which have been distinguished. Problem-focused strategies are efforts to do something active to alleviate stressful circumstances, where as emotion-focused coping strategies involve efforts to regulate the emotional consequences of stressful or potentially stressful events. Typically, people use both problem-focused and emotion-focused coping in their stressful episodes, which suggests that both types of coping are useful for most stressful events (Folkman & Lazarus, 1980).

Fear is the number one obstacle everyone must overcome at some point in their life. When the word fear is brought up I like to think of past situations that I experienced. There are many different methods used to conquer and learn from our fears such and exposure therapy, having a growth mindset, and thinking positive. For example, when I was younger fear was my worst enemy, School was the main reason that caused my fear. My fear of failure was my biggest obstacle growing up so I used that as a method to learn from my fears.

According to Freud, there are three kinds of anxiety – reality, moral and neurotic. Reality anxiety is experienced when there is an actual danger coming from the external world. Moral anxiety arises when there is a conflict between one’s behavior and what the superego is demanding one to do. Finally, neurotic anxiety is felt when the ego feels incapable of controlling the id and the urges hiding in it. The tools people use to get rid of anxiety is what psychoanalysts call “Defense Mechanisms” (Schultz and Schultz, 2009). Defense mechanisms are different behavioral patterns, some of them are considered mature (for example humor) and some immature but what is important for this paper is that in psychoanalytic therapy, defense mechanisms are identified and the goal of the therapy is to overcome them and access the unconscious conflicts which are according to the Freudians the root of any mental problem. Moreover, all problems’ origin can be found in childhood - most often in a faulty relationship with one of the primary caregivers (Hough,

According to my dictionary, Fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. When the word "fear" comes to my mind, I think of an emotion that's caused by a bad situation. There are many things in this world that put fear in me. My greatest fears are computer viruses, thugs, sick people, and clowns. Each of these fears make me very scared and give me goosebumps.