Читать книгу Anxiety For Dummies - W. Doyle Gentry, Laura L. Smith - Страница 32

Anxiety comes in various forms. The word “anxious” is a derivative of the Latin word angere, meaning to strangle or choke. A sense of choking or tightening in the throat or chest is a common symptom of anxiety. However, anxiety also involves other symptoms, such as sweating, trembling, nausea, and a racing heartbeat. Anxiety may also involve fears — fear of losing control and fear of illness or dying. In addition, people with excessive anxiety avoid various situations, people, animals, or objects to an unnecessary degree.

Anxious people tend to be extremely sensitive to danger, rejection, the unknown, and uncertainty. They may pay close attention to unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations. They also often dwell on the possibility of future calamities. Anxiety symptoms such as these have a tendency to cluster together. The following sections describe some of these major clusters.

The following subheadings roughly correspond to some of the major diagnoses discussed in DSM-5, but we think it’s more productive to focus on symptoms rather than technical diagnostic categories. (See the sidebar “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-5 [DSM-5]” for more information.)