9781422280652

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Chapter One

What Is Anxiety?

Everybody feels anxiety from time to time. But what sparks our anxiety can vary a lot. Kids might feel anxious before the first day of school or when studying for a test, while adults might feel anxiety about succeeding at their jobs or simply paying the bills. Regardless of the specific cause, anxiety usually boils down to someone being worried about what might happen in the future. Anxiety is a fairly unpleasant emotion to experience. It is somewhat related to fear, but it’s also different from fear in some key ways. Anxiety versus Fear Fear is the emotion we experience when we believe someone or something is about to hurt us. It can be caused by all kinds of things. A bully, an angry dog, a shot at the doctor’s office—all these things might cause fear because we associate them with physical pain. Of course, fear doesn’t require the risk of being

Words to Understand

irrational: baseless; something that’s not connected to reality. rational: logical; something that’s connected to reality. treatable: describing a medical condition that can be healed.