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Living with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder
As if living with dissociative identity disorder weren’t enough, many survivors, including myself, also live in the hades of generalized or some other type of anxiety disorder.
In this piece, I’m not just going to tell you about surviving despite generalized anxiety disorder, but also a little about how it is negatively affecting my life.
Adaptive, Evolutionary Anxiety
One would be forgiven if they believed that all anxiety is bad, but the facts do not prove that. In fact, anxiety is a kind of fear that helps us prepare for danger or something that is frightening. Anxiety causes a heightened awareness such as when a massive storm is coming and there has been a tornado warning. Anxiety helps us to watch the sky and readies us to run for cover should the need arise. Anxiety is an evolutionary adaptation that keeps us alive.
Humans cope with environmental dangers through the use of sensory organs that sense or see danger so we can avoid death or injury. The amygdala in our brain reacts to danger far earlier than our thinking brain parts. This means that during adaptive anxiety, humans may vocalize or try to run away from the danger even if they are not consciously aware at first. We have four choices we can make once the…
