The Psychology of Anxiety Disorders:

Matilda Osborne 11W/11A Psychology:

Anxiety is a completely normal human emotion which helps us to perceive danger and in turn keep
ourselves safe. However, some people experience excessive anxiety without threat, this can be
diagnosed as an anxiety disorder. People with anxiety disorders experience these emotions without
reason and for prolonged periods of time which can massively impact daily life. The symptoms of
anxiety are often physical and include racing heartbeat, shaking, sweating, fast breathing etc. These
are the symptoms of the body’s flight or fight response, which is a set of many psychological changes
to prepare the body for action against danger, to be able to fight or run.

During the fight or flight response the hypothalamus detects threat and instructs the sympathetic
nervous system to act and release adrenaline from the adrenal glands into the bloodstream. After
adrenaline is released, there are many effects on the body, such as: the heartbeat racing as well as
feelings of stress, panic, excitement or feelings of sickness. These changes happen almost instantly
after adrenaline is released. After the threat has passes, the body returns to its parasympathetic
state, reducing the activity of the body which had increased activity during the body’s fight or flight
response. When the threat has stopped, the person may feel hungry or thirsty as digestion is
prevented during points of high anxiety or because their energy was used up by being stressed. After
the threat has passed, this may also leave the person very tired as their body uses energy to raise
the heartrate, sweat etc. and emotionally ‘drained’.

People with anxiety disorders experience this more than the average person, often multiple times a
day; as the symptoms of anxiety in humans are extremely physical (ie. Sickness, dizziness, shaking
etc.) the effects of constant anxiety can feel like a physical illness. As the symptoms of anxiety are
caused by the overuse of the body’s fight or flight response, it is only logical that people with anxiety
disorders have something which triggers this fight or flight response unnecessarily. Although most
people with a mental illness such as Generalised Anxiety Disorder do not have anxiety caused by one
particular event, occurrence or object, therefore this unnecessary triggering of the fight or flight
response must occur neurologically.

People with anxiety disorders have areas of the brain that are ‘over active’. These areas of the brain
are those that are responsible for emotional responses such as: the hippocampus, the amygdala, the
thalamus and the hypothalamus (the area of the brain which detects threat during the first stages of
the fight or flight response). An overactive hypothalamus results in the brain detecting threats that
are not there, sending the body into its fight or flight response without reason. This explains how
people with anxiety disorder experience anxiety or panic attacks without any perceivable external
trigger and experience the symptoms of the body’s fight or flight response without actual threat.