How to know you have anxiety

Anxiety can make you feel worried or scared. Anxiety can cause physical symptoms such as a fast heartbeat or sweating. It is a normal human response to be anxious in certain situations. You may have an anxiety disorder if you feel anxious all or most of the time.

When anxiety symptoms appear, and you don’t know you’re an anxious person, you can have physical symptoms of anxiety without “feeling” anxious. So, it’s not that you aren’t anxious, but that you aren’t aware of being anxious and that your anxious behaviors are causing your physical symptoms.

Follow the 3-3-3 rule

Start by looking around you and naming three things you can see. Then listen. What three sounds do you hear? Next, move three parts of your body, such as your fingers, toes, or clench and release your shoulders.

A feeling of being out of control, or a fear of death or impending doom during a panic attack. Physical symptoms during a panic attack, such as a pounding or racing heart, sweating, chills, trembling, breathing problems, weakness or dizziness, tingly or numb hands, chest pain, stomach pain, and nausea.

Anxiety is not curable, but there are ways to keep it from being a big problem. Getting the right treatment for your anxiety will help you dial back your out-of-control worries so that you can get on with life.

Anxiety can be caused by a variety of things: stress, genetics, brain chemistry, traumatic events, or environmental factors. Symptoms can be reduced with anti-anxiety medication. But even with medication, people may still experience some anxiety or even panic attacks.

Fortunately, anxiety usually goes away once the threat passes — though it probably won’t be the last time you experience it. If you have an anxiety disorder, however, anxiety can linger well beyond the triggering event and become chronic or severe enough to impair daily functioning.