Anxiety

anxiety a feeling of dread, fear, or apprehension, often with no clear justification. Anxiety is distinguished from true fear because the latter arises in response to a clear and actual danger, such as one affecting a person's physical safety. Anxiety, by contrast, arises in response to apparently innocuous situations or is the product of subjective, internal emotional conflicts the causes of which may not be apparent to the person himself. Some anxiety inevitably arises in …

…form and results in physiological concomitants such as nausea, diarrhea, urinary frequency, suffocating sensations, dilated pupils, perspiration, and rapid breathing. Similar symptoms occur in several physiological disorders and in normal situations of stress or fear, but they may be considered neurotic when they occur in the absence of any organic defect or pathology and in situations that most people handle with ease. Other types of anxiety-related disorders include hypochondriasis, hysteria, obsessive-compulsive disorders, phobias, and schizophrenia.