What Constitutes A Mental Disorder? Emotions vs a Problem

Source: NAMI

Without emotions, we wouldn’t be human. By that I mean we wouldn’t be able to express ourselves. However, some feelings are felt on a deeper level and include physical effects. These feelings are symptoms of having a disorder. However, many people can’t tell whether this is just a regular feeling or if they have a disorder. In this blog post, I am going to be telling you the difference between disorder and a feeling.

One disorder we are going to be talking about is anxiety. Now, most people dismiss anxiety disorders because they see anxiety as a regular human thing. It can sometimes be seen by other people that it is a laughing matter but in all actuality, it is a disorder multiple people deal with. Regular people who experience anxiety experience it because, for example, they lose their wallets. Anxiety is a reaction to stressful situations. But, that isn’t what having an anxiety disorder involves. Having an anxiety disorder causes the person to have anxiety all of the time. It also affects their mental states and ruins their relationships with other people. Emotional Symptoms of an anxiety disorder: feelings of dread, feeling tense/jumpy, restlessness, and anticipating the worst. These may seem like regular human things but what separates a disorder from a feeling is what it physically does to the person. Some physical symptoms include racing heart, shortness of breath, upset stomach, sweating, tremors, twitches, headaches, insomnia, fatigue, upset stomach, frequent urination, or diarrhea. This makes a disorder much different from human emotion.

Disorders are severely different from regular feelings. They are much stronger and they’re exhausting to have. To make the people that have these disorders feel better about themselves, we should be empathetic with them. Like, don’t say “Yeah, I also almost had a panic attack being late to work.” Instead, you should say “That must’ve been hard for you, do you want to talk about it?” Empathy comes a long way and validating their feelings makes them feel better. Also, you should listen to them whenever they are venting about something. Let them get the weight off of their shoulders by talking it out. If someone with a disorder talks to you about their episodes then consider yourself a special person because not a lot of people talk about their struggles. At the end of the day, we are all people and because we have the same type of blood we should celebrate our differences.