Anxiety facts can help with one of the most maddening things about anxiety. That is, anxiety makes you feel like you don’t understand yourself anymore. If your anxiety has lasted for a long time, you might feel that you’ve never fully understood yourself. You know you feel terrible: worried, fearful, stressed, and gripped by a cycle of rumination and overthinking. You’re pretty sure it’s anxiety, but you check and double check references to be sure because you wonder if it’s actually anxiety or something else. These five anxiety facts might help you understand yourself and your own anxiety.

Anxiety while driving is commonplace for me. Due to generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), my brain magnifies my anxiety while driving. Even driving to a nearby store turns into a worst-case scenario in my mind’s eye. Some of this anxiety seems reasonable. Other fears involve driving activities that don’t distress the average person. When I drive, there is a specific driving anxiety I can’t conquer. I have a fear of getting into a car accident while making left turns in traffic.

Is it anxiety or a medical condition? It can be hard to tell because anxiety can feel miserable throughout the entire body, and symptoms can be frightening enough to cause people to wonder if they have anxiety or a medical condition. Not knowing what your symptoms mean can increase existing anxiety or cause new anxieties and worries. Of course, that can worsen physical symptoms and that, in turn, increase worries. Worrying whether you have anxiety or a medical condition can become a vicious cycle of worry, physical discomfort or pain, and worsening mental-- and physical health. Knowing what medical conditions share symptoms with anxiety can help you sort out the healing approach that is best for you.

Anxiety jabbers incessantly, creating maddening and anxious running commentary in our heads. To make it worse, anxiety acts as a translator and interprets what we hear and see, twisting things into its own warped ideas. With anxiety translating messages we receive, we often misinterpret the world around us. Anxiety's untrustworthy thoughts lead to self-doubt, faulty reasoning, negative beliefs, overthinking, and overanalyzing. Becoming aware of how the anxious voice in your head translates our incoming messages is an important step in correcting the translations and quieting the anxious running commentary that interrupts your inner speech.

Recognizing obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) rituals can be an important journey of self-discovery. Obsessive-compulsive disorder sufferers often have mental rituals that help lessen their worries and unwanted thoughts. When a sufferer performs an OCD ritual, it can temporarily help relieve anxiety. The rituals may seem illogical to those who don’t have the disorder. But to those who suffer from this often-devastating condition, recognizing OCD rituals and their triggers can sometimes lead to greater self-understanding and relief.

Performance anxiety may prevent me from living my dream of singing professionally. Since junior high school, choir teachers and audience members commented on my anxious stage presence. I loved to sing with other people in unison or harmony, but when it came to solos, I was a nervous wreck. I was the recipient of the “Every Which Way but Loose” award in high school choir because onstage, I simply couldn’t relax and enjoy performing. Performance anxiety was front and center at every concert, and it often stole my spotlight.

Anxiety and irritability are often connected. Ever have days when, in addition to feeling wired and anxious, you feel irritated and annoyed at almost everything—and everyone? Anxiety has a way of turning this into a growing problem. Rather than feeling irritable and moving on, anxiety makes people worry about the consequences of things they do or say when irritable and creates feelings of guilt. Guilt increases anxiety, and annoyance at the whole situation builds. This feels like an inescapable horror, but you can escape this cycle of anxiety and irritability.

Do you expect yourself to be Superman or Superwoman, a person with powers so great that you can do it all with no side effects like anxiety? If you are, you’re not alone. This pressure to do it all, be everyone to everything, is common enough to have terms attached to them: Superman complex or the Superwoman syndrome. Feeling pressured to live your life in a superhuman way can and does contribute to anxiety. You can use your very human powers to fight the Superwoman syndrome or Superman complex and decrease anxiety. 

Anxiety manipulates you. It’s not just you, of course, but anxiety would like you to believe that it’s only you. Anxiety is insidious, creeping and crawling through your brain, your mind, and your body. Anxiety causes its own symptoms but blames them on you. When you live with anxiety, you are dealing with this thing that takes on a life of its own and controls how you view yourself, others, and the world in general. There are things anxiety does to manipulate you and cause symptoms. 

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a relentless experience of anxiety and worry. Worry and anxiety are part of the human experience; there’s even a type of anxiety known as existential anxiety that we feel simply because we exist. However, the anxiety and worry of GAD go far beyond ordinary anxiety. Regardless of the type of anxiety you experience, even if it’s a diagnosable disorder such as GAD, you can find peace as you learn to leave worry at the door.