Anxiety disorder is a complex beast that affects more than just your emotions. It's seen primarily as an mood disorder, and while that is certainly true, anxiety has a strong mental and physiological component as well. This week, we'll explore one of the questions everyone with anxiety has asked themselves at some point: why does anxiety disorder make you so tired?

It's not exactly news that living with anxiety can warp our perceptions of other people, especially their intentions toward us. Social anxiety can make the world, and the people in it, seem mean-spirited, harsh, or even cruel. For me, I judge others in a very negative light when I'm in the grip of a particularly severe episode of anxiety. I expect the worst from people, and am still often surprised when I don't actually get it. That's because most people are significantly nicer than my anxious brain's perception would have me believe. The good news is, I'm getting better at remembering this while it's happening and social anxiety doesn't warp my perceptions as often or as severely as it once did.

  I've been having a horrible time with anxiety. It still affects almost every area of my life. And although I've certainly gotten lots better at coping, my anxiety seems to be developing a new wrinkle: walking around feeling so alienated from the world that nothing feels real.

Is your anxiety worse in the morning? Do you think, 'why can't I just get out bed'? I'm rarely on speaking terms with breakfast. The thought of getting up, a whole new day, it can be paralyzing. I'm told it isn't this way for everyone. Nor does a cup of coffee fix it, would that it could. If you have an anxiety disorder, or experience panic, it's not uncommon to find mornings particularly tough.

Sometimes I get woken up by anxiety-causing nightmares which isn't so odd, what with the PTSD n’all (Understanding PTSD Nightmares and Flashbacks). Full-on sweating through my pyjamas in a very non-sexy manner nightmares, so what do I do? Rollover and go back to sleep. You might be tempted to ask why I cope with nightmares like that, but I doubt I’m alone in the answer.

Anger can be the match that sparks a dip in your mood or a bout with anxiety, and according to what I've been reading recently this is because the part of your brain that normally keeps a lid on angry feelings is impaired when you're depressed.

I could just say yes but that would make this very short. If this seems a bit 101 it may be but I was asked and I thought it worth the post. You can have an anxiety attack without having a panic attack. Panic attacks are well-defined things. It isn't a notional concept. The terms anxiety attack and panic attack are not synonymous. For all that they’re commonly conflated (I'm guilty), they are distinct; In nature, process, treatment, and consequence.

Fear denied, repressed, suppressed, or put out of mind is not fear extinguished. Treating anxiety: 'as if' I've been told that acting 'as if' I'm not nearly as anxious as I am is a helpful thing. It's also dangerous. As with almost any technique sometimes is fine but if you're anything like me and you'll do whatever you have to do to be able to put your anxiety aside and function, and if what you want is to go on with as much of life as you can, uninterrupted by fear, then it can become destabilizing.

Feel free to question my emotional competence but I'm not insane. For that matter, most people with mental illness are not insane. This may be obvious but for many it's not. Anyway, how many times have you thought, 'oh goodness, I must be really losing it this time' during the course of mental health difficulties? It's a common concern that can dramatically increase the amount of anxiety a person experiences. It may also inhibit their ability to trust, and to ask for help.

Happy is what brings healthy, and viceversa, so it can't be that much of a surprise anxiety and depression have had some pretty rough consequences on my health; High blood pressure at 25, on-and-off flings with anemia, near-constant sleep deprivation. I may as well have an imp bouncing up and down on my kidneys whilst someone tells my nervous system to pump out all the stress hormones its got, so I can feel normal, or at least prepared. Like a Girl Scout on crack. That's PTSD hypervigilance for you. It's also that sometimes our bodies express what we are otherwise unwilling, or unable to say.