You're just anxious, you dont 'have anxiety' stop it.

[GreenyEye]

Anxiety is a diagnosable medical condition.

Being anxious is normal, everyone gets anxious/worried.

Anxiety is when it takes over your life and affects your ability to function day to day, when it becomes abnormal.

AIBU to tell people to stop saying you 'have anxiety' unless you have actually seen a Dr or someone professionally qualified to diagnose it.

You're making it much harder for those of us with medically recognised Anxiety Disorder to be taken seriously.

@GreenyEye YABU.

You don't get to assume and dictate how people feel.

Your point is fair, BUT you do not know they have/ have not been diagnosed. I'd use it as an opportunity to discuss anxiety disorder / anxiety as a part of other MH conditions.

Yep totally agree with you.

Being anxious and having anxiety are the same thing. I think it is a matter of degree and maybe what you really mean is that severe anxiety is a mental health issue or illness.

In one way I think that bringing talk about Mental health into the public domain is a good thing in order to remove the stigma of mental illness. On the other hand it seems that so many people are saying they suffer with their mental health when they just feel low as everyone does from time to time. I think this is why those on PIP due to their MH issues aren't necessarily regarded by many as having a disability.

When I had a baby I was told similar about people saying that they have depression and as a result decided not to go to the doctor about how shit I was feeling. Looking back I blatantly had PND but was made to feel my symptoms weren’t ‘bad enough’. But being less depressed than other people didn’t mean I didn’t need support.

Reading others replies and i agree it's not a race to the bottom and ofcourse anxiety all happens in varying degrees but I feel that the balance isnt right between explaining what anxiety can feel like ie, feeling extremely stressed, awful situations which bring on acute anxiety (normal situations which lead to feeling anxious) and anxiety that is just "there" as a medical condition, for no distinguishable reason that lives with you and that can only really be managed my medication/therapy. I know I'm not making sense but I hope it gives the general gist...

YABVU - my DH has every anxiety symptom in the book, something he's lived with since his teens. He's never had it officially diagnosed because he's too anxious about asking for time off to go to the doctor, it breaks my heart. Antidepressants and a definitive diagnosis pretty much saved my life, and he knows that, but he still won't go. I realise that some people like to describe themselves as anxious or depressed for attention but don't belittle those of us who silently live with it everyday.

I have anxiety pretty bad. Some days it is paralyzing. I'm in a pretty much constant state of anxiety even when I have nothing in particular to be anxious about. I haven't been diagnosed with anything, I can't afford to pay €60 for the Dr everytime I have to go back, pay for meds if needed or pay for counselling.
We already pay €60 Drs fees a month + €80 a month medication for my husband so he doesn't die. We can't afford for me to be diagnosed with anxiety so I can legitimately say I have anxiety without some one on the internet getting their knickers in a twist.

Sounds like the weird difference between 'falling over' and 'having a fall'.

I agree, I find it odd that people use the term when they just mean that a particular situation has made them anxious. I would absolutely consider 'having anxiety' to be a long standing condition.

I also wonder - what did we use to call 'anxiety' in the old days? When I was a kid no one "suffered from anxiety". At best you might have been called a worry wart. When did we start using the term?

YABU. Firstly, the word 'anxiety' is the noun related to the adjective 'anxious'. To all intents and purposes, saying 'I have anxiety' means exactly the same as 'I am anxious', just like 'I have worries' means the same as 'I am worried'. The word 'anxiety' existed long before modern diagnoses of anxiety disorders. Whereas for example saying 'I have Generalised Anxiety Disorder' means you have a diagnosed condition.

Secondly, would someone with high blood pressure, cancer or diabetes still have that if they hadn't been to a doctor? I had paralysing postnatal anxiety and panic attacks. For reasons I won't go into, I never sought medical help (though I should have done). Does that mean I didn't have anxiety?

How exactly would you know whether someone who says they 'have anxiety' is diagnosed or not?
Do you make your friends produce doctors notes?

This. I have a diagnosis, but I shouldn't have to tell people that. It's none of your damn business.

@ColdTattyWaitingForSummer I'm with you there. Anxiety is a perfectly 'normal' side effect of a chronic condition I have. I use 'normal' like that, because that's how my gp put it. I have had cbt due to it, but when I'm mid flare up it rushes in and can be debilitating. to you, and everyone else who has to suffer with it because it sucks

Maybe instead of getting narky about other people's 'fake' anxiety devaluing your own 'real' anxiety, we should all be asking why so many people do have anxiety these days and focus on ways to come up with solutions to that.

I was diagnosed with GAD at the age of 26. It was obvious to me (and my close family/ friends) that I’d been suffering with anxiety since I was 4. It didn’t magically appear upon diagnosis

I also wonder - what did we use to call 'anxiety' in the old days?

My Gran ‘suffered with her nerves’. Freud called it hysteria. Just because you don’t remember people having it when you were a child doesn’t mean they didn’t

Its not posts like mine that cause problems, but by other peoples flippant announcements that they 'have anxiety' when they're actually just suffering from normal, temporary situational anxiety, and then declare they're cured with the help of a self help book, a hug and a chat.

By doing that, they're taking away from people who aren't going to get better that way, because they DO need extra help and support from the medical profession and even if they dont go (because yes, I know that can be a massive barrier in itself for some) its likely to be a lifelong fight for them to cope.

The point I am trying to make isn't to minimise those people who do have a lifelong problem, but to make people who just announce they have anxiety when they're a bit worried realise the damage they're doing to public opinion on what can be a seriously debilitating, lifelong MH condition.

They minimise and create a false atmosphere that its not real, or easily gotten over, and make other people sceptical of its existence.. .they encourage the atmosphere of 'just.

I also wonder - what did we use to call 'anxiety' in the old days? When I was a kid no one "suffered from anxiety". At best you might have been called a worry wart. When did we start using the term?

They 'suffered with their nerves' instead.

Generalised anxiety disorder is exactly what it says on the tin. Being anxious all the time about things that wouldn't cause any issues for most people.

Many more people get anxious about some things but not others, and the things may be temporary situations, or a longer term anxiety relating to specific occurrences - being in strange places, driving, worrying that something is going to happen to your children. Phobias are an example of an extreme anxiety about something(s) but not everything.

Where anxiety shouldn't be used, but often is, is when what someone means when they say they have it is 'everything has to be done my way and for my benefit and nobody else's wishes or needs count because then I'll be upset. I have anxiety so I win top trumps'. That's when anxiety is abused, and what they term anxiety is what the rest of us would call CFery. But unfortunately there are people who've picked up on the greater awareness of anxiety disorders and have appropriated them to get their own way. They are the ones who definitely shouldn't be allowed to use the term.

*atmosphere of 'just pull yourself together' and 'stop worrying about it'

I also wonder - what did we use to call 'anxiety' in the old days?

That's like asking why they didn't have sepsis in the old days.

They did, they just called it something else.
Septicaemia, blood poisoning.

My point is, there's different names for things as time moves on.
The condition is always the same.

Theres a huge difference between

'I have anxiety'

And 'I feel anxiety because I have x happening tomorrow's

If someone said the first, I would think they had GAD.

I wouldn’t tell anyone who said they had anxiety not to say that unless they’d seen a medical professional and got the diagnosis. That said, I do think the term is over-used, especially where women are concerned. Doctors can often dismiss a woman’s medical condition as ‘anxiety’ without carrying out proper tests etc.

I am scared of flying, but I still do it. If that fear stopped me getting on a plane I would think I needed professional help.

The symptoms / effects of Anxiety can be measured on a spectrum.

People can self refer for treatment via the Improving Access to Psychological Therapy system where they will receive treatment from NHS trained therapists but only if their Anxiety scores high enough on a scale, otherwise they do not qualify for such treatment.

Having worked in this field, I would say that some folk can become anxious in relation to a specific event, such as redundancy / divorce etc but 'move through that' fairly well, even without Prof support.
Some folk have an underlying tendency to become Anxious over less discrete events - ie they suffer from anxiety much of the time, which can become quite disabling - they should benefit from Prof support.

I agree with you OP.
Lots of people on this thread appropriating the anxiety label because they “feel” like they have anxiety. They don’t. The mere fact a person can function without medication and therapy, and “power through” their “worst days” means they are only a normal level of anxious.

Anxiety is a medical condition, and not even a GP can diagnose it. It has to be a specialist psychiatrist. Yet all these people read symptoms on google and think they are qua qualified to self diagnose.

Like any medical condition, “feeling” that you have it doesn’t mean that you do. You can feel pain like a broken bone, but that doesn’t mean the bone is actually broken. You can feel like you have the flu, but that doesn’t mean you don’t just have a nasty cold.

I too wish people would just stop. It absolutely trivializes the illnesses and minimizes the suffering of those who actually have these disorders. It also contributes to the stigma of MH by giving people the false impression that “almost everyone” has “anxiety” and yet they can work or travel or cope in social situations so anyone who can’t is “using Anxiety as an excuse or malingering”. When the TRUTH is that almost everyone who claims to have anxiety does not have it.

I also wonder - what did we use to call 'anxiety' in the old days?

It was called hysteria and sufferers were called hysterics.
Psychiatrists back then were called alienists