40 Facts About Anxiety

Here are 40 Anxiety facts.

1-5 Anxiety Facts

1. Sleeping under a weighted blanket can help reduce anxiety. – Source

2. Scientists at UCLA noticed that “time and time again” people suffered their first experience with anxiety right after stomach illnesses. They did brain scans after patients ate probiotics, and found that stomach bacteria actually directly affected the connectivity of the brain. – Source

3. To help airline passengers deal with travel anxiety, San Francisco International Airport has hired the nation’s first airport therapy pig. LiLou wears costumes and performs tricks to help travelers calm down before boarding their flights. – Source

4. Horror movie soundtracks sometimes include infrasound, which is sound below the range of human hearing. Even though we can’t hear it we can still feel it and infrasound has been shown to induce anxiety, heart palpitations, and shivering. – Source

5. People with poor mathematical skills aren’t necessarily bad at math because they are ‘ungifted’. There is a phenomenon called ‘Math Anxiety’ that makes people perform worse, which sometimes leads to math avoidance, which leads to lesser knowledge and consequently more Math anxiety. – Source

6-10 Anxiety Facts

6. A program called Pets for Vets was started in the US where shelter dogs are paired with returned veterans to help reduce anxiety. – Source

7. In 2011, a study found that individuals with high social anxiety had high empathy. The study found that high empathy may make socially anxious individuals more sensitive and attentive to other people’s states of mind. – Source

8. People with anxiety perceive the world differently-their brain lumps both safe and unsafe things together and labels them all unsafe. – Source

9. The maladaptive coping strategy of feeling anxious and avoiding the issue causing it is a feedback loop that creates more future anxiety, by giving you relief every time you decide to avoid it. – Source

10. The police officer who took out Dimebag Darrell’s killer was so affected by the incident he had to give up his career due to PTSD and severe anxiety disorder. – Source

11-15 Anxiety Facts

11. When we get nervous, we overestimate how much other people notice our anxiety, due to the “Illusion of Transparency”. Luckily, studies show that simply being aware of this cognitive bias can make you more confident. – Source

12. Harrison Ford isn’t grumpy in all his interviews, he actually suffers from anxiety and a fear of public speaking. – Source

13. Caffeine can cause a sense of impending doom, especially on those prone to anxiety. – Source

14. Magnesium can be very effective vs anxiety, many people are quite deficient and a good supplement can be as effective as meds but with positive side effects. – Source

15. Comedian Daniel Tosh (Tosh.0) suffers from social anxiety, and can only overcome it by creating a different personality for his show. – Source

16-20 Anxiety Facts

16. People who constantly bite the skin around their fingernails or on the inside of their cheeks suffer from dermatophagia, an impulse control disorder linked to anxiety and obsession. – Source

17. There is a condition called Neurasthenia, aka Americanitis, involving anxiety, fatigue, flatulence, and mild depression, caused by white-collar jobs and a competitive business environment. – Source

18. Men have fluctuating hormonal changes similar to women’s monthly cycle that can cause anxiety. – Source

19. Creativity has been linked to anxiety, and “madness”, with writers being 121% more likely to suffer from bipolar depression than the general population and 50% more likely to kill themselves. – Source

20. According to studies, the average high school student has the same amount of anxiety as a 1950’s child psychiatric patients. – Source

21-25 Anxiety Facts

21. Pumpkin seeds have quite a bit of tryptophan and may help with anxiety disorders. – Source

22. Research of the placebo effect shows that green colored pills reduce anxiety. – Source

23. Getting excited helps with performance anxiety more than trying to calm down. – Source

24. Certain types of music can reduce anxiety in dogs, which can be useful during fireworks, thunderstorms, and separation. In a study when solo piano at 50-60 bpm was played, 85% became calmer, and over half of the dogs went to sleep. – Source

25. Some zoos raise puppies with captive cheetah kittens to help reduce anxiety, stress and develop social skills. –Source