Neuroses and Anxiety
Anxiety is the main characteristic of neuroses; it has a disruptive and disorganizing effect on the individual. Anxiety neurosis occurs when defensive behaviors are functioning inadequately, or not at all. Although no two anxiety attacks are alike, they generally are marked by episodes of extreme apprehension and restlessness, accompanied by periodic attacks of hear palpitation and excessive sweating. Panic reactions, where breathing is difficult, sometimes occur. Other symptoms of an anxiety attack include nausea, stomach distress, or instant severe headaches with stiffness of the neck and shoulders: A decision about even minor matters may precipitate major crisis for the anxiety neurotic because he or she is so insecure. To the neurotic, misery is real, not imaginary. The neurotic suffers in taking even the usual risks of life.
With the passage of time, the well-adjusted person solves his or her conflicts; not so the neurotic, who tends to cling to ineffectual behavior, unsatisfactory as it may be, because it temporarily lessens the anxiety.
At the intellectual level, the neurotic may know that the anxiety is unreasonable, but this helps little. Some people stay in a chronic state of anxiety, but for others it is only a temporary effect produced by specific events in their lives. Some anxiety is out in the open, such as extreme anxiousness in taking tests. Other anxiety may be hidden, coming out in a psychosomatic disorder such as a migraine headache.
Kleinmuntz describes a case of anxiety neurosis where the client's past history became available. His anxiety attacks were almost always precipitated by such stressful circumstances as lecturing before a group O, being teased by fellow workers. These settings served as an excuse for his incompetence. His reasoning, although possibly not a conscious level, was a convenient alternative to facing up to the possibility that he might not pass muster.
