Anxiety & Worry

Two more words whose origins add something of real relevance:

Anxiety. Every generation rediscovers the state of mind and body that we call anxiety and offers its own way of dealing with it. It is tempting to think of it as a recent phenomenon, but that would be a mistake: the Roman statesman and author Cicero classified it as an illness 2,000 years ago, and in doing so inherited a tradition going back to the Stoics and beyond.

Broadly speaking, the meaning we attach to the word “anxiety” - the anticipation of future threat - has not changed much over the years. What has changed is that the pressures and challenges of the lives we lead today have caused a sharp rise in its occurrence. Remedies such as medication, self-help, talking therapies, yoga or mindfulness work well for many, but there is no universal solution.

A better understanding of the nature of anxiety, where mind and body conspire to cause real distress, is given to us by the word’s origin. It is the direct descendant of the classical Latin “angere”, which means "to choke or strangle”.

There we have the clear, direct connection between the inhibition of breathing and the physical symptoms of anxiety. Focusing on the emotional and cognitive components of anxiety (“mental health”) is only half the picture – learning to identify and relax the tense muscles which cause shallow breathing is an essential part of dealing with it.

Worry. Worry comes from the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) “wyrgan”, which, like “angere”, means “to strangle”. So, like anxiety, the forceful constriction of breathing is at its root.

Worry is now mostly used in the sense of our response to a real and present problem, but a shadow of its ancient meaning can still be seen when we talk about a dog “worrying” a bone.