Anxiety as in "my anxiety", "I have anxiety" etc

[ChicChicChicChiclana]

It is my perception that anxiety is becoming more and more a thing. Is it just more and more a thing that people talk about, or is it increased anxiety in the general population?

Inspired by another thread (but really not a TAAT) I did a very crude Mumsnet poll.

I advanced searched the word anxiety from a start date of 1st January in the years 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020.

In 2008 it took until 2nd March before the word anxiety had been written on threads 500 times.

In 2012 it took until 11th/12th January.

in 2016 it took until 6th January.

in 2020 it took until 3rd January.

Like I say - crude. But interesting?

are you subtly trying to say you dont believe that everyone who says they 'have anxiety', actually has it?

I think that the line is sometimes blurred between an actual, diagnosed condition and just feeling generally anxious about something.

A bit like misophonia/emetophobia. There are a startling number of MN posters who "have" one or the other or both.

I wouldn't imagine that many people actually enjoy vomiting or being with someone else who is vomiting, and most people don't really enjoy listening to someone who eats noisily.

It would be interesting to know how many of these conditions are actually diagnosed by an accredited professional and how many are people who have seen the word and decided that it fits their (perfectly reasonable) dislikes.

I think it's because people used to say that they were worried about something, or had worries, or someone was always fretting about something.

Now they say they have anxiety.

How many people were thought of as "highly strung" or "sensitive" or "over-emotional"?

My mum is highly strung but she’s now anxious

Anxiety can be debilitating, but I think a lot of people on here forget that actually anxiety is normally a totally appropriate response to some situations. I’m anxious about secondary school allocations which happen on Monday - not overly so, it’s normal?

It’s like people using OCD as a reason for being very tidy. It’s not OCD. You’re just tidy.

Those people using it as a catch-all are very different from those posts you can tell the poster genuinely has actual issues with anxiety even if they don’t say so.