Anxiety is a term that most of us are familiar with. We all have it to some kind of level (unless you’re a psychopath) as it is a survival instinct. An increasing number of people are dealing with anxiety disorders, which unlike anxiety itself, is not something we should experience. It can be debilitating to the point that we can’t live life normally.
10 Ways Anxiety Affects Daily Life
1. Sleeping
Sleep is pretty important to function normally in your day-to-day life. Without proper sleep you can start to lose concentration, develop health problems, suffer memory loss, have severe mood changes and have a weakened immune system.
One of the symptoms of anxiety is racing thoughts. If your mind is constantly on the go, you can’t get to sleep easily. Not only that but the physical effects of anxiety are designed to help you run away, not fall asleep.
2. Eating Meals
To live a healthy life, we need to have a healthy diet. Nutrition is important as it gives our body what it needs in order to function properly. We need different vitamins and minerals to stay healthy. Our diet affects how are body feels, how are brain works and enables us to stave away issues such as heart disease, high blood pressure (in some cases, sometimes physical issues are genetic).
Anxiety kicks our bodies into fight or flight mode and in doing so, it stops our digestive system working. Think about prey animals. When something spooks them, they stop eating and run. As humans, we have different triggers so although it may be safe to eat, anxiety doesn’t really make that easy. That can mean compromising on meals or the types of foods eaten which can then lead to deficiency.
3. Making phone calls
Phone anxiety is a whole thing and you can find out more about how to combat it here:
Basically though, feeling anxious about making a phone call can mean that you decide to not call people (i.e. friends, doctors) or can leave you unable to communicate clearly, miss out information or even forget what you’re supposed to talk about. When that happens, it makes the experience negative which means there’s likely to be more anxiety the next time you pick up a phone.
4. Work/School
Anxiety can be triggered by a multitude of things which can mean that it is triggering during working hours. In fact, work itself can trigger anxiety because of stressful situations where your livelihood is effectively at stake.
Suffering with anxiety can affect your performance at work by leaving you in pain, confused, forgetful, etc. and can even lead you needing to take time off regularly and unpredictably. Because of that, a lot of employers are cautious when employing someone with anxiety as they can be deemed as unreliable.
Similarly with school, anxiety can lead you to skip classes, falling behind with assignments or unable to take exams. The good news is, school doesn’t last forever.
5. Socialising
Anxiety can be isolating. It may be difficult to make friends because of not being able to explore new hobbies or stay at work. It can equally be difficult to go out with friends if certain places are triggering which often leads anxiety-sufferers to skip events with friends.
6. Shopping
Thankfully we live in a world where we can still get necessities even if we can’t leave the house. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t times when we need to pop to the shops to get something quickly. Anxiety can make that very challenging. It can be difficult getting to the shop by yourself or being in the shop by yourself especially if you suffer with social anxiety. That can mean deciding to go without, just so that you don’t have to face the anxiety and it’s symptoms.
7. Relationships
Battling anxiety every day can leave you exhausted and irritable. It makes sense but that doesn’t mean it’s easy for the people around you. It can spark up arguments, or it can make it difficult because they can’t help you. Anxiety is frustrating for everybody whether you suffer with it or are trying to support someone who’s suffering with it. That frustration can lead to a breakdown in relationships.
8. Getting out of the house
Going back to the feeling of isolation, anxiety makes staying in your safe space very appealing and that safe space is most likely your home. The more affirmed that becomes, the harder it is to leave. One type of anxiety leaves it’s sufferers unable to leave their home without having an anxiety attack (severe agoraphobia).
9. Driving
Firstly, there’s driving anxiety which you can read about here:
Aside from that, it can be difficult to drive when you feel anxious. It could have nothing to do with driving itself but it impacts it. When you’re experiencing high levels of anxiety, your reactions suffer as does your awareness. Theoretically it makes you more vigilant but it can lead to erratic driving and poor decision making which of course equals dangerous driving.
10. Anxiety Attacks or Panic Attacks
There’s not a lot of explaining to do here but anxiety/panic attacks suck. They can throw off an entire day. They are physically and mentally draining. You end up living in fear of the next one, avoiding anything that will provoke it and when you do experience them, you just have to spend the rest of the day, perhaps even the next recovering.
There are ways to manage the symptoms of anxiety but it’s important that we spread awareness of how bad it can be. Yes, for some anxiety can be an inconvenience but for others, it can mean adapting their entire life to it.