Depression and anxiety: symptoms to recognize them easily
Emotional, neurological or social imbalances are behind these disorders.
The seat of emotions is in the brain, not in the heart, as some literature and art in general proclaim.and not in the heart, as some literature and art in general proclaim. Specifically, in a series of neural circuits, mostly buried in the depths of the brain, commonly known as the limbic or paleomammalian system.
In fact, all psychological pathologies known to man are characterized by an emotional deficit or excess. That is to say, mental illnesses can basically be defined as affective states that for some reason, escape their range of normality.
In turn, this emotional deficit or excess is caused by different chemical imbalances and dysfunctions in the limbic system regions and other adjacent areas involved in the supervision and regulation of mood. The following are the symptoms associated with depression and we will see the symptoms associated with depression and anxietytwo of the emotional states that are most commonly associated with disorders.
Symptoms of emotional maladjustment in depression
Depression is characterized by the exacerbation of some emotions that, in their proper measure are beneficial for the person, such as sadness, guilt and shame. Who suffers from this problem, enters a state of deep sadness that leads him/her to cry or feel anguish for a good part of the day.. As a corollary, they begin to blame themselves for what is happening to them, and feel distressed for worrying their friends and loved ones.
Convinced that he has become a heavy burden on his family, the feeling of shame is triggered and often the depressed patient begins to think that the best thing that could happen to him is to die, since the disease prevents him from seeing a more or less promising horizon.
Of course, usually none of this is true. What happens is that the disturbance of these emotions, which deviate from their normal course, end up clouding the normal process of reasoning of the ill patientaltering his system of beliefs, completely staining his perception, pushing him to think that he is a useless, reprobable being, incapable of fending for himself, and that consequently it is to be expected that he will end up plunged in the most absolute social and economic ruin, abandoned by all those whom he loves, and freed to the fatality of his inexorable and disastrous destiny.
Symptoms in anxiety
Another psychiatric condition marked by uncontrolled emotions is what is known as generalized anxiety disorder. In this case, the predominant feeling is worry derived from fear, and the false certainty that something bad is irremediably about to happen.
As its name indicates, the person with generalized anxiety worries about everything, and what is worse, all the time, from the moment he/she wakes up until the moment he/she leaves the room.From the moment they get up until they go to bed, they cannot stop thinking about their family, health, home economy, work and an endless number of mundane and day-to-day issues, such as, for example, that on the weekend they should go to the supermarket for their weekly grocery shopping, the possibility (without any proof) that their partner is unfaithful, or what the neighbor who lives next door may have thought, whom they carelessly forgot to say hello to last week when they passed him/her at the shopping mall.
Constant, omnipresent worrying drives the person into a state of constant vigilance, and it is easy to identify someone afflicted with this condition: they are individuals who have become impatient, distrustful, complaining, accelerated, and who live permanently on the defensive.They live permanently on the defensive, believing that they must always be on the alert to prevent and avoid the impending misfortunes they believe life has in store for them.
Since they can never relax, they also fail to enjoy anything. Even activities that should be pleasurable, such as going to the movies, eating out, or a close cousin's birthday party, become a nuisance, a source of stress rather than satisfaction.
As long as the person with anxiety does not understand that most of his fears are unfounded, the condition tends to become chronic, the condition tends to become chronic, and often enters what I call the "exhaustion phase".which is nothing more than a state of depression, a consequence of the frustration felt at the impossibility of controlling everything, and of the physical and mental exhaustion that comes with the permanent monitoring of the many but improbable lurks, risks and dangers that the world has to offer.
Expanding the repertoire of emotions
Now then, what can we do to get rid of some illnesses such as depression and pathological anxiety? Well, a natural way to counteract the problem is to try to minimize the sources of stress and maximize the range of pleasant emotions that we are capable of experiencing.
The efforts of psychologists and psychiatrists are oriented in these cases to restore the normal emotional functioning of the patient stricken by the disease. In this sense, the patient is helped to productively manage his or her negative emotions.The individual is able to identify his or her positive emotions, so that he or she can enhance them and get the most out of them.
As soon as this is achieved, the way the individual perceives the world begins to improve. The environment ceases to be a cold and threatening place; his reality is transformed, it becomes more affable. The conjunction of both strategies gives shape to the best recipe for getting rid of illness and moving towards personal well-being and happiness.
(Updated at Apr 13 / 2024)