In their case they simply become invisible, tolerated but in the main ignored. They are simply seen as awaiting death.
Victims of anxiety because of avoidance and inability to act often become bystanders or extras in the dramatic enactment of their own lives. They procrastinate themselves through years of inaction essentially wasting much of their lives because of their fear to become themselves and engage in the living of their own life. Living vicariously through others is but a very inadequate compensation for life.
Anxiety paralyses you but also in contrast can drive you. To understand this one has to understand a little about the origins of anxiety. Anxiety comes from various systems in the brain being in conflictual situations within themselves or with other systems. The three main systems most often involved are the thinking systems, the feeling systems and the obsessional or addictive systems of the brain.
Intra-system conflict occurs when one part of the system finds itself in disharmony with another part. When this is in the thinking system it is easy to understand how one can have opposing thoughts about one subject. You might need to go to work but you might prefer to stay at home. You might really think you need another drink but you also know this will put you over the limit to drive. You might think you need to lose weight but you also think just one small cupcake doesn’t make that much of a difference. You might want to end a relationship but you think you will not survive on your own. These kinds of conflicting thoughts are commonplace and a daily occurrence. They set up however anxious tension in the brain and often set up spiralling subsidiary thoughts that can drain you of intellectual energy so much so that people can collapse exhausted simply from the mental exertion involved.
Similarly opposing feelings such as feeling love for two different people can set up a conflict which seems intolerable. Or feeling both love and hate for the same person for example a sexually abusive father.
The third type of conflict comes from extra-system conflict such as the conflict between feelings and thoughts. For instance you might think that something is terribly wrong but you may go along with it because it feels good.
These conflicts can escalate into major crises of thinking and feeling which can often feed on themselves fanning the flames of anguish and despair. If the pain of the anxiety involved is too great then you often become paralysed. Your brain can no longer tolerate the stress you are under. You remove yourself from the situation psychologically and present a calm indifferent air. In extreme cases a totally frozen and paralysed attitude is created where spontaneous or appropriate behaviour is impossible. Often there is a plastic seeming indifference to what is occurring and in sexual situations this is often mistakenly taken as compliance.
The pain that these conflicts cause is excruciating and leads to urges to escape. There is something so intense about this psychological pain that even suicide seems like a worthwhile alternative. It is little understood that it is actually the pain created by anxiety (anxiety-pain) that is the main reason that people think of self-harm or suicide. The majority of depressives are usually too immobilised by their illness to exert themselves to such acts. When they do so however the driving force is often anxiety a common accompaniment of depression and which is largely responsible for the subjective misery suffered.
Extreme anxiety causes by virtue of the intensity of the subjective pain a drive to escape more often than not leads to escape drives. In order to escape the sufferer immerses themselves in some distracting usually obsessive activity. This can be work or It can be addictions to alcohol, drugs, gambling pornography or other sexual obsessions. The most common reason for so-called nymphomania is in fact an underlying state of anxiety.
When the underlying brain is too vulnerable and insecure as in children or adolescents anxiety can be paralysing. They simply withdraw and become distant and apparently disinterested. In acute cases these subjects become unable to speak (mutism) or function normally. If you have ever had the experience of standing up in a public gathering to speak and finding yourself unable to say a word or witnessed someone else doing likewise in that situation you would be very familiar with the experience of anxiety paralysis.
Unresolved anxiety-obsession leaves you with underlying vulnerability and insecurity. When you are able to cope with the anxiety with the defence of distraction you survive but when it lets you down as most defences are prone to do then you do not cope well. This is the reason why performance is often episodic and sporadic leaving you uncertain as to whether on any particular occasion you are going to cope or not. If the pressures build to a point where you are consistently experiencing a disintegration of self-identity then things start going badly and you make larger and larger mistakes on a consistent basis. This is when the whole house of cards begins to fall down and disaster either strikes or is imminent. This is when anxiety destroys you. We have all seen many politicians for example enact this scenario out often very publicly.
4 Symptoms to do with the inability to grasp reality
This is a major and important topic so intrinsic to anxiety as a whole that I have written more on it below as part of psychiatric agnosia.
In principle though anxious people have consistent difficulty with social reality. This leads them to often be too patient, too understanding, too kind, too intimate and too sensitively indirect in their communications. This naturally leads to great frustration when they are treated unfairly, ignored, taken for granted or disregarded completely which is a common psychologically inspired societal reaction to such behaviour. They then react adversely. It can come as a severe shock when the very same person is then experienced as being impatient, completely unsympathetic, unkind, stand-offish and boorishly direct in their communication to the point of offensiveness. This inability to grasp social reality leads generally to very unpleasant consequences to the bewilderment of the person involved.
Victims of anxiety because of avoidance and inability to act often become bystanders or extras in the dramatic enactment of their own lives. They procrastinate themselves through years of inaction essentially wasting much of their lives because of their fear to become themselves and engage in the living of their own life. Living vicariously through others is but a very inadequate compensation for life.
Anxiety paralyses you but also in contrast can drive you. To understand this one has to understand a little about the origins of anxiety. Anxiety comes from various systems in the brain being in conflictual situations within themselves or with other systems. The three main systems most often involved are the thinking systems, the feeling systems and the obsessional or addictive systems of the brain.
Intra-system conflict occurs when one part of the system finds itself in disharmony with another part. When this is in the thinking system it is easy to understand how one can have opposing thoughts about one subject. You might need to go to work but you might prefer to stay at home. You might really think you need another drink but you also know this will put you over the limit to drive. You might think you need to lose weight but you also think just one small cupcake doesn’t make that much of a difference. You might want to end a relationship but you think you will not survive on your own. These kinds of conflicting thoughts are commonplace and a daily occurrence. They set up however anxious tension in the brain and often set up spiralling subsidiary thoughts that can drain you of intellectual energy so much so that people can collapse exhausted simply from the mental exertion involved.
Similarly opposing feelings such as feeling love for two different people can set up a conflict which seems intolerable. Or feeling both love and hate for the same person for example a sexually abusive father.
The third type of conflict comes from extra-system conflict such as the conflict between feelings and thoughts. For instance you might think that something is terribly wrong but you may go along with it because it feels good.
These conflicts can escalate into major crises of thinking and feeling which can often feed on themselves fanning the flames of anguish and despair. If the pain of the anxiety involved is too great then you often become paralysed. Your brain can no longer tolerate the stress you are under. You remove yourself from the situation psychologically and present a calm indifferent air. In extreme cases a totally frozen and paralysed attitude is created where spontaneous or appropriate behaviour is impossible. Often there is a plastic seeming indifference to what is occurring and in sexual situations this is often mistakenly taken as compliance.
The pain that these conflicts cause is excruciating and leads to urges to escape. There is something so intense about this psychological pain that even suicide seems like a worthwhile alternative. It is little understood that it is actually the pain created by anxiety (anxiety-pain) that is the main reason that people think of self-harm or suicide. The majority of depressives are usually too immobilised by their illness to exert themselves to such acts. When they do so however the driving force is often anxiety a common accompaniment of depression and which is largely responsible for the subjective misery suffered.
Extreme anxiety causes by virtue of the intensity of the subjective pain a drive to escape more often than not leads to escape drives. In order to escape the sufferer immerses themselves in some distracting usually obsessive activity. This can be work or It can be addictions to alcohol, drugs, gambling pornography or other sexual obsessions. The most common reason for so-called nymphomania is in fact an underlying state of anxiety.
When the underlying brain is too vulnerable and insecure as in children or adolescents anxiety can be paralysing. They simply withdraw and become distant and apparently disinterested. In acute cases these subjects become unable to speak (mutism) or function normally. If you have ever had the experience of standing up in a public gathering to speak and finding yourself unable to say a word or witnessed someone else doing likewise in that situation you would be very familiar with the experience of anxiety paralysis.
Unresolved anxiety-obsession leaves you with underlying vulnerability and insecurity. When you are able to cope with the anxiety with the defence of distraction you survive but when it lets you down as most defences are prone to do then you do not cope well. This is the reason why performance is often episodic and sporadic leaving you uncertain as to whether on any particular occasion you are going to cope or not. If the pressures build to a point where you are consistently experiencing a disintegration of self-identity then things start going badly and you make larger and larger mistakes on a consistent basis. This is when the whole house of cards begins to fall down and disaster either strikes or is imminent. This is when anxiety destroys you. We have all seen many politicians for example enact this scenario out often very publicly.
4 Symptoms to do with the inability to grasp reality
This is a major and important topic so intrinsic to anxiety as a whole that I have written more on it below as part of psychiatric agnosia.
In principle though anxious people have consistent difficulty with social reality. This leads them to often be too patient, too understanding, too kind, too intimate and too sensitively indirect in their communications. This naturally leads to great frustration when they are treated unfairly, ignored, taken for granted or disregarded completely which is a common psychologically inspired societal reaction to such behaviour. They then react adversely. It can come as a severe shock when the very same person is then experienced as being impatient, completely unsympathetic, unkind, stand-offish and boorishly direct in their communication to the point of offensiveness. This inability to grasp social reality leads generally to very unpleasant consequences to the bewilderment of the person involved.