Is anxiety just part of my personality?

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome. It can range from mild uneasiness to debilitating panic. Anxiety is considered a normal human emotion that everyone experiences from time to time. However, for some people, anxiety becomes much more severe and occurs more frequently, significantly interfering with daily life. This is when anxiety may be classified as an anxiety disorder.

Some common signs and symptoms of anxiety include:

• Feeling nervous, restless or tense
• Having a sense of impending danger, panic or doom
• Increased heart rate
• Breathing rapidly (hyperventilation)
• Sweating
• Trembling
• Feeling weak or tired
• Trouble concentrating or thinking about anything other than the present worry
• Having trouble sleeping
• Experiencing gastrointestinal (GI) problems
• Having difficulty controlling worry
• Having the urge to avoid things that trigger anxiety

What causes anxiety?

The causes of anxiety disorders aren’t fully understood but are likely a complex combination of factors including:

• Genetics: Anxiety disorders can run in families. Certain genes may increase the risk of developing anxiety disorders.
• Brain chemistry: Disruptions or imbalances in certain neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine, may contribute to anxiety disorders.
• Environmental factors: Traumatic life events or chronic stress, especially when experienced during childhood, can alter how the brain responds to future stresses, making anxiety more likely.
• Personality traits: Having a shy or nervous temperament as a child or excessive worrying and risk aversion could increase anxiety risk later in life.
• Substance abuse: Chronic substance abuse may lead to anxiety either as a result of withdrawal or toxic effects on the brain.
• Medical conditions: Certain medical problems, like thyroid abnormalities and heart arrhythmias, can produce or worsen anxiety symptoms.

Are anxiety disorders a mental illness?

Yes, anxiety disorders are considered mental illnesses. They are diagnosable conditions characterized by excessive, irrational anxiety and fear. Anxiety disorders significantly disrupt normal functioning, daily activities, work, school, relationships and overall quality of life.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) published by the American Psychiatric Association, there are several different anxiety disorders:

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
• Panic Disorder
• Agoraphobia
• Specific Phobia
• Social Anxiety Disorder
• Separation Anxiety Disorder
• Selective Mutism

Each anxiety disorder has its own distinct symptoms, though they share many common features like excessive fear and anxiety.

Anxiety disorders are the most common type of mental illness in the United States, affecting over 19% of adults each year. They often co-occur with depression or substance abuse. Effective treatments are available through medications, psychotherapy and stress management techniques.

Are personality and anxiety linked?

Research has uncovered links between certain personality traits and a tendency toward anxiety. While personality does not directly cause anxiety disorders, certain personality types may increase vulnerability.

Some key personality traits tied to anxiety include:

• Neuroticism: This personality dimension refers to a tendency to experience more negative emotions like fear, sadness and anxiety. Those high in neuroticism are emotionally reactive and vulnerable to stress. Multiple studies show neuroticism correlates strongly with anxiety disorders.
• Behavioral inhibition: This temperament style is characterized by shyness, restraint and a tendency to withdraw from new people or environments as a child. Such heavy social inhibition as a child can evolve into social anxiety later in life.
• Negative affectivity: This personality factor involves focusing on and emphasizing negative emotions across many situations. It has been associated with increased risk for general anxiety, social anxiety and depression.
• Harm avoidance: People with this trait tend to be cautious, apprehensive, doubtful and fearful. They are discouraged from taking risks. As a result, higher harm avoidance is linked to higher anxiety susceptibility.

So in summary, those with personalities characterized by frequent and intense negative emotions, high sensitivity to stress, extreme shyness and a tendency to avoid risks appear most prone to developing anxiety issues.

Can your personality cause anxiety?

Personality alone does not directly cause clinical anxiety disorders. However, certain personality traits like neuroticism, negative affect and harm avoidance can increase vulnerability and reactivity to stressful events that can trigger excessive anxiety.

So personality may predispose people to anxiety problems by influencing how they appraise and cope with stress. Specifically, those with anxiety-prone personalities may have tendencies like:

• Perceiving more situations as threatening
• Having a bias towards negative interpretations when uncertain
• Avoiding perceived risks excessively
• Failing to habituate to repetitive stressors
• Coping poorly with anxiety symptoms as they occur
• Having difficulty regulating emotional reactions

These thought and behavior patterns can transform normal anxiety into pathological anxiety over time. Changing such unhelpful cognitive and coping styles through therapy can help prevent and treat anxiety disorders.

So in summary, personality alone does not directly make someone anxious, but it can contribute to anxiety risk by promoting negative appraisals and maladaptive coping tendencies when faced with stress. Targeting those patterns may help manage anxiety susceptibility.

Can you change an anxious personality?

It is difficult to completely change core personality traits that have developed since childhood. However, psychological research shows that personality tendencies are not entirely fixed, but can change gradually over time. This suggests that with consistent effort, it may be possible to alter habitual thought and behavior patterns contributing to an anxious personality style.

Some evidence-based tips for reducing anxiety-prone personality patterns include:

• Cognitive restructuring: Learning to identify and dispute irrational anxious thoughts can modify neurotic interpretations and reactions over time.
• Exposure therapy: Facing feared situations gradually can help overcome avoidance and inhibitions stemming from harm avoidance.
• Relaxation strategies: Techniques like deep breathing, meditation and progressive muscle relaxation can help lower reactivity to stress.
• Improving coping skills: Adopting healthier emotion regulation strategies like exercise, self-care and social support can minimize negative reactivity.
• Mindfulness practices: Increased present moment awareness can reduce fixation on past worries and future threats characteristic of anxiety.
• Positive psychology interventions: Deliberately introducing more positive experiences and emotions can balance excessive negativity.

So with consistent motivation and work to challenge ingrained personality patterns, it may be possible to successfully alter habitual thought and behavior loops that energize anxiety. This can gradually cultivate a more balanced, resilient personality style less dominated by anxiety.

When does anxiety become problematic?

Occasional, short-lived anxiety is a normal part of life for everyone. Anxiety becomes problematic and enters the realm of disorder when it:

• Is highly frequent, intense or long-lasting
• Causes significant emotional distress
• Disrupts your normal functioning and daily activities
• Impairs work performance, relationships or school functioning
• Compels repetitive avoidance behaviors
• Is accompanied by multiple physical symptoms
• Feels irrational, excessive or out of proportion to triggers
• Persists for at least 6 months or more

According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), diagnosing an anxiety disorder requires symptoms most days for at least six months that negatively impact normal functioning.

Seeking help is recommended if anxiety feels uncontrollable, causes major distress, avoids key life activities, feels irrational and persists every day without relief for months. This level of severity likely requires professional treatment.

On the other hand, brief stress-related anxiety that comes and goes is not considered pathological. Being able to manage periodic anxiety yourself is a sign it is not yet disordered.

At what age does anxiety usually develop?

Anxiety disorders can begin at any age, though research suggests there are typical age ranges for the onset of different anxiety disorder types:

• Separation anxiety disorder: Common childhood condition emerging between ages 7-9.
• Phobias: Specific phobias emerge in middle childhood. Social anxiety typically develops around age 13.
• Panic disorder: First panic attacks most often occur in the mid-20s.
• Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD): Tends to emerge in middle adulthood between ages 30-45.

While anxiety disorders can arise at nearly any age, there appear to be typical onset periods:

• Childhood: Common for separation anxiety, phobias and generalized anxiety to appear.
• Adolescence: Around age 13, social anxiety disorder emerges at increased rates.
• Early adulthood: Panic attacks often first occur in the 20s.
• Middle adulthood: Generalized anxiety peaks between 30-45 years old.

Anxiety developing very early in life often suggests a strong biological and genetic component. Anxiety emerging later may be more influenced by life experiences and trauma. Seeking treatment quickly, regardless of age, leads to the best outcomes.

Can anxiety disorders be cured?

Anxiety disorders cannot be completely “cured” or eliminated permanently in all cases. They are often chronic conditions prone to periodic relapses. However, symptoms can be well-controlled with comprehensive treatment and ongoing management.

Research suggests around 50-65% of those receiving appropriate treatment for anxiety disorders like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), medications or both achieve remission for months to years. Remission refers to minimal or absent symptoms, with improved functioning.

Relapse is common, however, when treatment is halted prematurely before the underlying anxiety patterns are fully resolved. Severe anxiety problems may require years of therapy and medication to achieve full, lasting remission.

With commitment to treatment and maintaining long-term management techniques, even severe anxiety can often be well-managed. Some key principles for effectively managing anxiety long-term include:

• Learning your unique anxiety triggers and early warning signs
• Continuing occasional therapy or medication as needed
• Having an anxiety management plan if symptoms worsen
• Avoiding anxiety-provoking situations and limiting stimulants like caffeine
• Making lifestyle changes to reduce stress
• Practicing relaxation, mindfulness and calming activities daily

While anxiety disorders may not be permanently “cured”, with diligent treatment and daily self-management, people can experience extended remission and significant improvements in symptoms and quality of life.

Will anxiety medication change my personality?

Anti-anxiety medications like benzodiazepines and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are not thought to fundamentally change or alter core personality. However, by relieving anxiety symptoms, they can modify anxious behavioral tendencies and thought patterns, indirectly creating personality changes.

Some examples of possible anxiety medication personality impacts include:

• Reduced harmful avoidance and fearful inhibitions due to decreased anxiety, allowing more social engagement, exploration and risk-taking.
• Less neurotic thinking, worry and rumination by lowering anxiety levels and neurochemical imbalance.
• Improved overall mood from elevated serotonin, making one less reactive and tense.
• Sedating effects decreasing anxious arousal and panic reactions to stress.
• Greater confidence and willingness to try new experiences when anxiety is well-managed medically.

By controlling anxiety, medication can temporarily modify related personality traits like neuroticism, introversion, negative emotionality and harm avoidance. But core personality remains intact. If medication is stopped, anxious personality tendencies may return. Also, medication side effects may indirectly alter behaviors. Overall personality is likely only subtly affected by anxiety medications.

What is the best treatment for anxiety disorders?

For most anxiety disorders, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is considered the most effective standard treatment. CBT helps identify and change anxious thinking patterns and behaviors that maintain and worsen anxiety. But a combination of CBT with anti-anxiety medications often works best for many people.

Research suggests the following treatments are effective for anxiety:

• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the most researched psychotherapy for anxiety.
• Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) medications like sertraline, escitalopram or paroxetine.
• Serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) like venlafaxine and duloxetine.
• Benzodiazepines like clonazepam, lorazepam or alprazolam for rapid relief.
• Deep breathing techniques, meditation, yoga, exercise, adequate sleep and healthy diet can also help manage anxiety.

For long-term anxiety recovery, combining CBT and medications, while also improving lifestyle factors that worsen anxiety, generally gives the best, most lasting results. Some benefit from group therapy and self-help education groups as well. It often requires trying different approaches to find what works for each individual long-term.

When should someone seek help for anxiety symptoms?

It is recommended you seek mental health treatment if anxiety:

• Feels excessive, irrational or out of proportion to triggers
• Persists daily for over 6 months
• Causes significant emotional distress
• Disrupts your normal functioning and daily activities
• Impairs your work performance, relationships or school functioning
• Compels repetitive avoidance behaviors
• Is accompanied by multiple physical symptoms
• Does not improve with self-help after a few weeks

Anxiety can be normal at times. But if it feels uncontrollable, debilitating and persistent every day without relief, professional evaluation and treatment may be needed. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and medications can help bring severe, chronic anxiety back to normal levels again.

Do not keep struggling alone. Seeking help early often leads to the best recovery results long-term. Many effective treatments for anxiety exist that can significantly improve quality of life.

Conclusion

In summary, while anxiety traits can be part of someone’s ingrained personality, severe, disordered anxiety reflects much more than normal personality variation. Key risk factors like genetics, brain chemistry, trauma, stress and inhibited temperament underlie the development of pathological anxiety most often.

Personality does not directly cause clinical anxiety on its own, but can increase vulnerability to anxious responses to stress. The good news is that therapy focused on altering harmful thought and behavior cycles contributing to anxiety can help change those personality tendencies over time. Consistent treatment paired with daily self-management provides the best chance for effectively controlling chronic anxiety.