What is anxiety?

Anxiety is part of every human's inbuilt system. Everyone has experienced anxiety at some point in their life, for example: Before a test, before a performance etc. A little anxiety is normal and healthy, it gives you motivation and makes you try your ultimate hardest. An anxiety disorder however, is too much anxiety. Instead of getting nervous about things that you should get nervous about: tests/starting new schools or jobs etc.. you begin to get nervous about things in everyday life that have no reason to be nervous about. Anxiety doesn't just come on suddenly overnight, it's something that's progressing over months or sometimes years. It's debilitating and once you're caught in the anxiety cycle you quickly become your own worst enemy.

This is why i believe an anxiety disorder is a serious, debilitating illness. It restricts you from living a life you're entitled to. Where you was once able to do anything and taking the things you done daily for granted, you're now struck by fear, fearing just a walk to the local shops. That's all anxiety actually is, FEAR.

I believe there's many reasons why someone can be prone to developing anxiety.. In my case it was caused by an overload of stress. I believe stress is the main factor causing anxiety in so many people because noone, including myself, realises their bodies warning signals. When your body is so tired and drained from so much stress, you think a good nights sleep will make it all better. But it doesn't.. And everytime i ignored these warning signs my body was giving me, the closer i got to developing my anxiety disorder. Of course there's other reasons too such as: Greif and anxiety can also be a symptom of an underlying illness. That's why it's so important not to just self-diagnose and get diagnosed by a professional.

Anxiety can manifest itself in many ways, everyone gets different symptoms because everyone is different. Through all the research i've done, there seems to be more than 100 symptoms that anxiety can cause! And believe me they can be the weirdest.
Anxiety comes with both physical and psychological symptoms. Here below are just a few i suffered from the most:

Physical symptoms
Racing heart
Shaking hands
Feeling dizzy
Dry mouth
Panic attacks
Clenching muscles
Feeling lightheaded/faint
Chest pains
Tight chest
Hyperventilating
Feeling like you can't breathe
Feeling like your throat is closing up

Psychological symptoms
Feeling distant (Depersonalization/Derealisation) - feeling unreal
Feeling like you're going mad
Low mood
Feelings of dread

From the top of my head these are the main ones i can think of.