Anxieties How They Affect Learning
By
David Vance
Concordia University
8/14/2013

Anxiety Webster’s defines anxiety as 1. Worry or uneasiness about what may happen, 2. An eager but uneasy desire according to Sarason and Sarason Sigmund Freud came up with the definition of Anxieties (Sarason, and Sarason 1989), (Webster’s New World Dictionary. 2002). No one knows the fear that an anxiety suffer has to endure, one such is the fear in leaving their house or dwelling. A fear so great that your fight or flight response that Jensen talked about kicks in but to an extreme that leaving a place of safety is overwhelming Pat who has suffered with this since a teenager when a bully would confront him and taunt him on a daily basis that he dropped out of school and turned to illicit narcotics for relief (Jensen 2005). Anxieties can be real or imagined, anxiety is a just a part of life some students may have anxiety when speaking in front of class, shyness is considered an anxiety. What sets Anxiety Disorders apart is the persistence and there maladaptive behaviors associated with them. Anxiety Disorders are the most common psychiatric disorders diagnosed according to Sarason and Sarason eight percent of the population suffers from anxiety (Sarason and Sarason 1998). The largest category is phobias in which anxiety is aroused by a specific type of situation, animal or an object. Obsessive compulsive disorders when thinking certain thoughts and not doing certain things (like checking locks on the front door) according to Sarason and Sarason arouse intense anxiety and concern (Sarason and Sarason 1989). The characteristics of anxiety include feelings of uncertainty, helplessness, and physiological arousal. A panic disorder, in which a person experiences a sudden of intense dread, can last for mere minutes to hours. Sarason and Sarason state that learning psychologist says that anxiety is a learned response and general principles of learning can be applied to understanding of all behavior, including anxiety disorders. They contend that anxieties that reach clinical proportions is a learned or acquired response, a symptom that has been created by environmental conditions, often within the