Quotes & Sayings About Severe Anxiety

It is very difficult to appreciate from the outside what a person in severe anxiety is experiencing. Brown rightly remarked about his friends 'imploring a drowning man [me] to swim when they don't know that under the water his hands and feet are tied. — Rollo May

If you think back to the moments when you've gone through the most pain in your life, or the most severe anxiety, your body is very much involved in that. Your body is expressing those emotions. So, when we, as actors, try to access those feelings, the body is a great tool to use. — Joel Kinnaman

Imagine saying to someone, "I have a kidney problem, and I'm having a lot of bad days lately." Nothing but sympathy, right? "What's wrong?" "My mom had that!" "Text me a pic of the ultrasound!" Then pretend to say, "I have severe depression and anxiety, and I'm having a lot of bad days lately." They just look at you like you're broken, right? Unfixable. Inherently flawed. Maybe not someone they want to hang around as much? Yeah, society sucks. My mental problems made me feel ashamed. I felt like I had to hide them until I could "work through it" on my own. Which I never did, because I didn't know how. And I didn't feel brave enough to make fixing my mind a priority because I didn't think anyone would understand. — Felicia Day

As the doctor walked me out he told me to "stop worrying so much" because it's possible that some of the rash actually is hives caused by nerves, and I made a note to tell my shrink the breaking news that the medical world finally found the cure for my severe anxiety disorder and that the prescription is "Just stop worrying so much." My God, we've come so far with science. Later — Jenny Lawson

I think one thing is that anybody who's had to contend with mental illness - whether it's depression, bipolar illness or severe anxiety, whatever - actually has a fair amount of resilience in the sense that they've had to deal with suffering already, personal suffering. — Kay Redfield Jamison

You create severe anxiety when you jump from inclination to musturbation. — Albert Ellis

Whenever you have strong negative feelings because unfortunate things are actually happening to you or you imagine that they might occur, see whether these feelings healthfully follow from your wishes and desires to have better things occur. Or are you creating them by going beyond your preferences and inventing powerful shoulds, oughts, musts, demands, commands, and necessities? If so, you are turning concern and caution into overconcern, severe anxiety, and panic. Observe the real difference in your feelings! — Albert Ellis

Anxiety kills relatively few people, but many more would welcome death as an alternative to the paralysis and suffering resulting from anxiety in its severe forms. — David Barlow

This book is also not intended to be a substitute or replacement for competent medical or psychological treatment when these may be needed. If you suffer from very severe anxiety, severe phobias, severe depression or any other serious mental health condition, the advice in this book may not be appropriate or sufficient for you. You are advised to consult and work with an experienced mental health professional, if you are not already doing so. Also, if you believe that your symptoms or your problems are beginning to get worse as you read this book, you should stop reading it immediately and consult a trained health professional. — Doc Orman

I had a dog named Oliver with severe separation anxiety. He couldn't be alone ... so I had to bring him wherever I went. — Matthew Pearl

We infrequently contemplate the harms that await any new-born child - pain, disappointment, anxiety, grief, and death. For any given child we cannot predict what form these harms will take or how severe they will be, but we can be sure that at least some of them will occur. None of this befalls the nonexistent. Only existers suffer harm. — David Benatar

A person who suffers from severe locomotor anxiety finds himself in an almost permanent state of mental tension. He wakes in the morning with the anxious expectation of having to go out somewhere in the course of the day. — Karl Abraham

Since the Second World War, rates of common mental illness (depression and anxiety) have been increasing in the industrialized nations, whereas rates of recovery from severe mental illness have not improved despite the availability of apparently effective therapies such as antipsychotic drugs. — Richard Bentall

But since anxiety attacks the foundation (core, essence) of the personality, the individual cannot 'stand outside' the threat, cannot objectify it. Thereby, one is powerless to take steps to confront it. One cannot fight what one does not know. In common parlance, one feels caught, or if the anxiety is severe, overwhelmed; one is afraid but uncertain of what one is afraid. The fact that anxiety is a threat to the essential, rather than to the peripheral, security of the person has led some authors like Freud and Sullivan to describe it as a 'cosmic' experience. It is 'cosmic' in that it invades us totally, penetrating our whole subjective universe. We cannot stand outside it to objectify it. We cannot see it separately from ourselves, for the very perception with which we look will also be invaded by anxiety. — Rollo May

I know just how isolating it can feel to experience severe anxiety. — Zoe Sugg

One in six people suffer depression or a chronic anxiety disorder. These are not the worried well but those in severe mental pain with conditions crippling enough to prevent them living normal lives. — Polly Toynbee

Well, I have severe OCD and social anxiety disorder. I was diagnosed when I was fifteen and every year I get worse. I don't like people, I don't like outdoors, and I don't like trying new things. I have a routine and when my routine is interrupted, like you seem to enjoy doing, I get extremely stressed and it becomes difficult for me to focus for hours afterwards. — Nash Summers

The main reason why clinicians may not diagnose personality disorders is that they think that doing so supports therapeutic pessimism. Recent research has shown this is not true; most patients get better, either with time or with treatment, that the prognosis is actually better than in many patients with severe mood and anxiety disorders. — Joel Paris

When the hour of departure drew near, the maternal anxiety of Mrs Morland will be naturally supposed to be severe ... Cautions against the violence of such nobleman and baronets as delight in forcing young ladies away to some remote farmhouse, must, at such a moment, relieve the fullness of her heart ... But Mrs Morland knew so little of lords and baronets, that she entertained no notion of their general mischievousness, and was wholly unsuspicious of danger to her daughter from their machinations. — Jane Austen

I actually did go through severe depression and anxiety attacks where I couldn't sleep for weeks. It was definitely several months of being not myself. — Felicia Day

In all summaries, the problems seem simpler than they actually are. In the following conclusions, anxiety may sound again like an abnormal condition affecting only unfortunate individuals. I would like to emphasize again that anxiety is a life-long challenge. The tradegy of Brown is that his anxiety, which was severe enough at times to remove almost all possibilities from his existence, is mainly destructive and paralyzingly rather than challenging and enlivening. I hope the reader will keep in mind the essential humanness of anxiety. — Rollo May