Anxiety is a very normal emotion, which gives rise to feelings of nervousness every now and then. An anxiety disorder is a serious medical condition in which people experience a high degree of distress and mental trauma, which causes difficulties in leading a normal life. People suffering from this medical condition experience high levels of anxiety and nervousness almost all the time. Here are the symptoms that indicate you're suffering from anxiety disorder.

1. Excessive worry - This condition persists if you worry about the day to day activities a bit too much on a regular basis. It is identified when you start taking too much stress about very petty things, which tends to affect you in an adverse manner. A noticeable sign of excessive worry can be too much fatigue.

2. Sleep problems - Problems falling asleep at the right time and problems in maintaining a sound sleep are two signs that indicate you have an anxiety disorder.

3. Irrational fears - This symptom is not generalized; instead, it is specific and subjective in relation to a particular thing or situation. The fears that are experienced under this category are sudden and unexpected in nature and there is no fixed rationale behind these fears.

4. Muscle tension - Muscle discomfort and pain is one of the leading physiological causes of an anxiety disorder. The pain felt is chronic and pervasive, and is very common among people facing situations of anxiety. If you are exposed to constant periods of anxiety, you will experience fatigue, muscle pains and unwillingness to work.

5. Chronic indigestion - Problems related to the digestive system are also a sign of anxiety disorder. In this case, you may face constant digestive problems accompanied by a common disorder called IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). IBS refers to an anxiety situation in the digestive tract, which is characterized by stomach aches, cramping, bloating, gas, constipation, and/or diarrhea.

Apart from the above-mentioned symptoms, other symptoms of an anxiety disorder include stage fright, self- consciousness, panic attacks, memory flashbacks, perfectionism, compulsive behaviors, self- doubt, and such others.



How to know if you have an anxiety disorder?

Psychiatric disorders like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia do not appear all of a sudden. There are small changes that happen to an individual over a long period of time until the disease fully develops. These signs and symptoms might be too subtle in the early stage for other people to notice until they become obvious. But an early detection of any irregularity proves to be more beneficial for the patient in the long run.

It is important to know the telltale symptoms of mental disorder to distinguish between what is regular and what is not.

Withdrawal
Everyone needs some quiet time to cool off and relax but if a person continuously withdraws him/herself from social occasions and avoids meeting or speaking to friends, it could be a sign that something is wrong. Losing interest in life, work and people are symptoms of depression and psychotic disorder.

Thinking problems
Having trouble concentrating, remembering, understanding and explaining oneself in a coherent manner are some common signs of mental disorder.

Anxiety
Excessive stress and anxious behavior for a prolonged period are not normal. Frequent heart palpitations, headache, shortness of breath, racing mind and restlessness are cries of help that need to be heard.

Emotional outbursts
Sudden dramatic outbursts for no apparent reason, frequent mood swings and feeling distressed are potent signs of mental illnesses. These kinds of behavior are seen as part of a person's nature and so they are often unnoticed.

Changes in appetite and sleeping patterns
Oversleeping may be a sign of depression and insomnia could be a sign of anxiety. Changes in appetite and not caring about oneself or the world are indicators of a mental problem.

5 Silent Signs Of A Psychiatric Disorder

Panic disorder is a condition that strikes without reason or caution and can be serious. Indications of panic disorder usually include sudden attacks of panic and anxiety, in addition to physical side effects, such as sweating and a pounding heart. During a fit of panic, the reaction is based on the circumstances, which may not be threatening in general, but triggers a feeling of panic. After some time, a person with a panic disorder builds up a consistent fear of having another fit of anxiety, which can influence the every day functioning and lifestyle in general. Panic disorder usually occurs alongside other conditions like depression, liquor abuse, or drug abuse.

You might experience the ill effects of a panic disorder if you:

Encounter frequent, unforeseen fits of anxiety that are not attached to a particular circumstance or event
Stress over having another fit of anxiety
Are trying to avoid the places of your precious panic attacks
The most common symptoms of a panic disorder are as follows:

Trouble relaxing and feeling uneasy most of the time
Beating heart or abdominal pain with a feeling of nervousness
Serious irrational and emotional fear
Feeling as if you are out of breath
Feeling as if you are being choked or smothered
Dizzy spells
Trembling or shaking
Sweating constantly
Feeling nauseous or having a stomach ache
Shivering or numbness in the fingers and toes
Sudden chills or hot flashes
A fear that you are losing control or are about to die
While a single panic attack may just last a couple of minutes, the impact of the experience can leave a long lasting impression and make you susceptible to more such attacks. In case you have this issue, the repetitive fits of panic take an emotional toll. The memory of the fear that you felt during these attacks can affect your self-confidence and cause interruption to your regular day-to-day existence. In the end, this prompts to the following panic disorder effects:

Expectant uneasiness: Instead of feeling like yourself in the middle of panic attacks, you feel tensed and on edge. This uneasiness originates from a dread of having future attacks of anxiety. This fear is seen more often than not, and can be extremely disabling at times.
Phobic avoidance: You start to stay away from specific circumstances or situations. This might happen since you are maintaining a strategic distance because of your previous panic attack. On the other hand, you may stay away from areas where escape would be troublesome or help would be inaccessible in case you had a fit of panic.
Medicines: Medicines can be used to control or decrease a majority of the side effects of panic disorder. Even if medicines do not form a part of the main treatment, when combined with other treatments, medicines are very effective. Eg. therapy and lifestyle changes.

Panic Disorder - 12 Signs You Are Suffering From it!

Are you a 'What-If' person? Kill anxiety in 4 easy ways

Thinking about dangers and risks is a normal phenomenon, it helps us to stay alert and to become a good problem solver. It’s only when worrying gets out of a person’s control, it turns into a problem. If a person is constantly preoccupied with “what-if " and keeps imagining worst-case scenarios, worry actually turns into the cause for high pulse rate, insomnia, poor mental and physical health. 

Here are 4 simple steps to cope with anxiety and worry.

1. Breathing technique: The first thing to do when you get anxious is to take deep breath. Deep breathing is a powerful anxiety-reducing technique because it activates the body’s relaxation response. Try slowly inhaling to a count of 5, filling your belly first and then your chest, gently holding your breath to a count of 5, and slowly exhaling to a count of 5 and repeat several times.

2. Accept that you’re anxious: Remember anxiety is just a feeling, like any other feeling, by reminding yourself that anxiety is simply an emotional reaction, you can start to accept it. Acceptance is critical because trying to eliminate anxiety often worsens it. But accepting your anxiety doesn’t mean liking it or resigning yourself to a miserable existence. It just means you would benefit by accepting reality as it is – and in that moment, reality means 'anxiety' you are feeling.

3. Question your worries. When people are anxious, most of the time their brains start coming up with all sorts of unrealistic ideas, which most likely will never occur. To avoid unnecessary worry, one should ask himself / herself a few questions like:
- Is there a reason to believe something is wrong?
- What evidence is there that something is wrong?
- If the worst possible outcome happens, what would be so bad about that?
- What are the options I can use to handle the situation at hand?


4. Focus on right now: When people are anxious, they are usually obsessing about something that might occur in the future. It is important that when a person becomes anxious, he/she takes a deep breath and pay attention to what’s happening right now, around them. Even if something serious is happening, focusing on the present moment will improve your ability to manage the situation.

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Are you a 'What-If' person? Kill anxiety in 4 easy ways


7 CHARACTERISTICS OF EMOTIONALLY STRONG PEOPLE

Emotionally strong people are better able to manage the stresses and distresses of daily life, and recover more quickly from challenges and crises when they arise. Is your emotional engine strong enough to take you through the ups and downs of life? Are you riding a bullock cart which can topple over anytime you pass through a broken road or are you driving a four wheel, all terrain vehicle, which will ensure you a safe trip through all the rocky terrains of your life?

A common cultural belief is that people who don’t cry and are unemotional, detached are the emotionally strong ones...and the ones who cry easily and exhibit emotional turmoil are the weaker ones. Well, this is just a myth and not an accurate indicator of one’s mental and emotional strength. A person’s internal coping mechanism will determine how strong he/she is emotionally and deal with challenges and bounce back from them. For eg. Two investors invest in a startup company and watch it fail after 5 years of hard work...one cries copious tears and falls apart, the other controls his emotions but feels defeated. Both were not emotionally strong as they couldn’t sustain the pressure and crumbled. It would have been fine if they felt sad and worried over the loss of time, resources and money and then bounced back with fresh ideas and renewed energy, which would have shown their capability to bounce back from difficult situations.

Unfortunately, too many of us judge ourselves incorrectly in exactly such moments. If we react emotionally or tearfully to emotionally challenging situations we scold ourselves for being weak, even when we have every intention of persisting and moving forward and even when we believe we will eventually succeed. Tears are usually a sign of frustration and disappointment, not defeat. What you believe about your future chances of success and how discouraged you feel in the long term is far more important than how often you cry in response to stresses and bad news.

The following list will help you decide how emotionally strong you are and where you need to work on yourself:

1) Emotionally strong people are less discouraged by setbacks and disappointments: they see each failure as an opportunity to learn and improvise over the last one. They compare themselves with themselves and define their own measures for failure and success. You could do an analysis of your strengths, limitations, opportunities and impediments in order to get over difficult situations. Geet, a student who didn’t get into his desired subject of IT, sat through 5 years of Law and did some extra courses in corporate law and worked towards fulfilling his dream of working in the Corporate. He felt confident, happy and satisfied with his efforts.

2) Emotionally strong people are more adaptable to change: they welcome and embrace changes in themselves and their environment simply because it brings newer opportunities and learning which can catapult them on their way to success. New boss, different stage of life, children going away are changes that will surely happen. Preparing for them in advance, can help people cope better with changes. When Surabhi got married, she took marital counselling to prepare for the differences that will crop up due to changes in the environment, thinking and attitudes of her inlaws family. She is a happy and successful wife and mother today.

3) Emotionally strong people are able to recognize and express their needs: ability to acknowledge and express your needs is being genuine to yourself and an expression of self care. People who are self aware move faster on the ladder of success as they are devoted and passionate towards their goals and needs. Taking care of your health and exercising along with a professional career makes for an emotionally strong person. You can become aware of your needs and values in counselling and experience contentment and power as you take charge of your life.

4) Emotionally strong people focus on getting around a hurdle rather than on the hurdle itself: focussing on the hurdle can be very emotionally draining and demotivating. Emotionally strong people invest their energies in working through a problem and looking for viable solutions, which ensures their victory over stresses and strains. If you have lost money in business, then working on your sales and marketing skills could get you better gains rather than feeling defeated. Counselling can help you look at problems objectively and from different perspectives. Get in touch with your problem solving skills and feel motivated and accomplished again.

5) Emotionally strong people can learn from mistakes and criticism: who hasn’t been subjected to criticism or made some mistakes? It’s human to err. Working towards excellence rather than perfection and looking for the golden piece of advice in the strong criticism helps emotionally strong people win over situations and important relationships. Sarita, an intelligent and smart woman ignored the critical remarks of her mother in law because she knew that there is a lot to learn from her. She knew which battles to fight and which ones to let go of.

6) Emotionally strong people tend to see the larger perspective in a challenging situation: They don’t get weighed down by smaller defeats when they have the larger picture in mind. An emotionally strong employee, Martin, who experienced office politics, kept his cool and focussed on his work.

7) Emotionally strong people are able to recover more quickly from emotional wounds such as failure or rejection: nobody can reject you unless you give them the permission. Seeing each failure as an opportunity to grow and learn helps. Staying with what you can do differently next time and having fall back plans helps to reduce the impact of failure. Thomas Edison didn’t get deterred by the number of times he could make his bulb glow. He kept looking at different permutations and combinations and kept learning from each mistake. Finally, his bulb glowed and now we all can benefit from the fruits of his hard labour.

If you don’t find yourself scoring high on this list, then there is no need to worry because in personal counselling, you can build emotional strength and capacity to bounce back by working on your mindset and learning more adaptable responses to stresses of daily living.

7 characteristics of emotionally strong people

When it comes to the brain and the iq, is bigger the better? does size really matter? is there really a connection between the size of your brain and intelligence? with the help of findings by neurologists 
And scientists, we seek to find out!

1. Ailments and the brain: scientists have found that children with autism have a brain that has grown in a disproportionate manner in the very first year of their life. This prevents the child from making connections with normal behaviour. On the other hand, children and adolescents who suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or adhd have shown signs of having a much smaller brain size. Many scientists have shown that the size of the brain shrinks as we age, and this does not have any visible effect on our cognitive abilities.

2. It's all relative: the size of the brain does not really have a bearing on the way a person's cognition gets shaped. Even large mammals like elephants and whales are finally hunted and tamed by humans who have smaller brains in comparison. The brain is made up of billions of neurons which need to function properly. It may be seen that scientists consider the brain mass in relation with the rest of the body so as to speculate about the cognitive abilities of the person. Why is this required? large animals need a well functioning and proportionate brain size to control and run their organs with proper cognition for satisfactory results, which is what we humans seem to have done.

3. Neanderthal brains: historically, the earliest man or the neanderthals are said to have had larger brains than we do. These people are believed to have brains that are at least 10% larger than the brains that we have in our modern times. The shape of their brain was different too. They were also heavily muscled people which had a bearing on the size and shape of the brain and bodies as well as the lean tissue within the brain. They also survived very successfully for a period of over 200, 000 years, which obviously points to some form of elevated cognition, as per many scientists.

4. Animals: while animals with small brains like lizards and reptiles do not perform too well on iq tests, the animals with bigger brains like elephants and dolphins perform much better. But the medium sized brains of monkeys, lemurs and other animals are said to perform in the best manner. The correlation between the body size and the brain does not seem to hold good here, as per various researches.

So the verdict as per medical science and research stands divided!

Is There an Association Between Brain Size and Intelligence?

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