High Anxiety: What High Anxiety Actually Is
In the 1977 cult classic film “High Anxiety”, Richard H. Thorndyke (Mel Brooks)
found himself running the Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous.
And all of us know nervous people. Some of even know very nervous people. Very,
very nervous people are rarer, and may be those afflicted with “high anxiety”.
High anxiety takes the normal physiological reactions each of us has in
threatening situations to debilitating levels. Persons experiencing a constant
state of anxiety, even when not in threatening circumstances, have anxiety
disorders. And those with the most extreme anxiety disorders, panic attacks and
phobias, have high anxiety.
The American Psychiatric Association defines a phobia as “intense, recurrent,
unreasonable fear of an object, activity, or situation not induced by trauma, a
chemical substance, or a medical condition”. Someone suffering from phobia has
such an extremely high anxiety response to a trigger that their job,
relationships, and even the daily activities of their life are disrupted. The
high anxiety sufferer realizes that his or her fear is unfounded, but remains
incapable of stopping it.
High anxiety produces three different phobias. “Specific phobias” lead a person
to experience a panic attack when they approach a specific item--acrophobia is
an intense fear of heights; and zoophobia is a fear of all animals. There really
is a list of phobias from A to Z. To those of us who do not have phobias, some
of the things on the list can seem absurd, but to those in whom they generate
high anxiety they can be life-destroyers.
The second high anxiety phobia, “social phobia”,
makes people so afraid that they will do something humiliating
in social situations that they simply avoid being in them. Fear
of public speaking is quite common, but most of us are never
called on to do it. There are, however, high anxiety social
phobics who can’t eat in front of others, or are paralyzed when
they try to write and someone is looking over their shoulders.
Social phobia is not the same as extreme shyness. Social phobics
only become anxious when they are required to perform certain
actions the company of others, and will go out of their way to
avoid situations requiring those tasks.
The most severe high anxiety phobia is “agoraphobia”, which
comes from the Greek words for “fear of the marketplace”.
Persons suffering from agoraphobia live in dread of finding
themselves, in case they experience a high anxiety panic attack,
in places with no ready exit.
Agoraphobics will plan their daily existences along routes which
they have determined to be "safe", no matter how convoluted
those routes may be. Or, in the worst cases, they become unable
to function outside their own homes. Those most affected with
high anxiety agoraphobia have been housebound for years.
"High Anxiety" may have provided the 1977 theater-going audience
with some genuine belly-laughs, but for millions of people who
live with it every day, it’s no laughing matter.
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