Anxiety: what is it?

Anxiety is the tendency to create stress for yourself, to exaggerate it or be scared of it right from the very first signs. For example, starting high school may make you anxious: what if you don’t make any friends?

Everybody gets anxious from time to time, for example before an exam or during a sports competition. Anxiety can even save your life by getting you out of a dangerous situation. For example, it’s totally normal to feel anxious and have all your senses on the alert when you walk down a dark alley! In daily life, anxiety might mean being scared that you’ll never be able to get the job of your dreams… when in reality, you just got one bad grade on a high school test!

Luckily, normal anxiety (and the related stress) disappears as soon as life returns to normal.

However, if the anxiety continues, you feel a high level of distress, you can’t clearly identify the reasons, it constantly fills your thoughts, and it has a negative impact on various areas of your life, you might be suffering from an anxiety disorder.