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Exploring the Root of Anxiety

I choseto read an article called “Understanding the Anxious Mind” by the New York Times. This article was written in 2009, but the research discussed in it dates back to a study done in the 70’s/80’s. It details how babies who were highly reactive to new stimuli at birth almost always grew into anxious adults. This was interesting because it proves that many people are born pre-wired to be anxious. By definition, diagnosed anxiety is seperated into several different medical conditions: panic, social anxiety, phobia, obsessive-compulsive, and post-traumatic stress. I liked this article because it taught me things I didn’t know before, like how the amygdala section of your brain is connected to the regions which handle autonomic nervous system function and motor skills. This basically means that being anxious automatically causes your brain to involuntarily make your heart and breathing faster. So if you have an over active amygdala you will experience these symptoms much more frequenly than the average person.