Maybe We Should Stop Using Clinical Words to Describe Our Emotions
Etymology could help us to understand why
I am lucky enough to have a lot of friends, and I am not that lucky to suffer from anxiety.
These two facts might seem unbound, but they are not. Let me start with my anxiety.
Some years ago, I faced my first panic attack. So, I went to see a doctor and I was diagnosed with an “anxiety disease with panic attacks”. I was given therapy, which helps me a lot, and now I live a mostly desirable life, in which anxiety is not a problem anymore.
It did not disappear. It is a characteristic of mine: it made me empathetic and sensitive, but I can manage it and prevent it to become a limit in my life. I can travel, work, practice sports, and enjoy my spare time with my friends.
My friends…
I love them, and I love spending time with them. They are lovely, smart people with many conversation topics. But they often make the mistake to speak about their feelings using clinical words. Anxiety is a clinical term, which identifies a very specific discomfort.
If we go back to Latin and check the etymology of these sorts of diseases, we find that anxiety derives from the verb: angere which means: to shrink. In fact, who is…
