Anxiety is simply excessive worry or exaggerated reaction to a triggering event. Although most people do not realize, there are various types of anxiety. If you feel that you are suffering from anxiety, you may like to have a brief learning about the different types of anxiety, including the lesser known ones. That will help you with symptom description, which in turn will help your doctor in diagnosing.



The most common forms of anxiety are generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, social phobia and other phobias, panic disorder and separation anxiety disorder. These disorders are attributed to past traumatic events or genetics, and it is rare that anxiety is brought about by no reason at all although cases like this have been reported.

Now, let's focus on the less common forms of anxiety, and I have listed some of them below. These are all common worries that one may go through at one time or another, and often they are not perceived as disorders. However, it never means that disorders haven't been developed from such anxieties.

1. Existential Anxiety

This type of anxiety is related to spirituality and mortality. Sigmund Freud called this type of anxiety as the "trauma of non-being". When a person realizes that he is not immortal and will die someday, this can load him with enormous worry.

Freud believed that religion then becomes the coping mechanism so that the sufferer's unwholesome fear of death will be minimized. This form of anxiety can be somewhat harmless and may even motivate ingenuity; but it can also be hazardous if a person starts to have strong suicidal urges because of feelings of hopelessness.

2. Boredom Anxiety

This type is fairly obvious and is brought on by extreme boredom and idleness. The person becomes totally bored of his/her present living status, and develops into anxiety for no apparent reason at all. The solution to this type of anxiety is to help the suffer find out the meaning and happiness in life, be it a hobby or love.

3. Test and Math Anxiety

There have been cases reported that tests and math are sources of anxiety. This is so because all students are expected and supposed to be able to succeed in academic study. They are trained, at a very early age, to think that academic achievement go hand in hand with self worth and that low grades are an embarrassment. This type of anxiety is usually accompanied by physical symptoms like nausea, headaches and dizziness, and can actually hinder the performance of a student. So it is important to make the students today realize that having a low grade is not an equation to the end of social importance and

peer acceptance.

All forms of anxiety can possibly lead to serious anxiety disorders with severe emotional and physical symptoms. So, ignoring the initial signs of anxiety never helps in treatment. The correct way is to pinpoint the root cause of your anxiety and seek professional help.