What causes anxiety?

What causes anxiety?
Some people seem to be born with a tendency to be anxious and indeed recent research suggests that a
risk for certain forms of anxiety disorders can be inherited.

Other people develop anxiety disorders after having experienced specific traumatic, stressful incidents or
events in their life – for example, divorce, bereavement, starting a new job, moving house, etc.

Anxiety disorders can also be ‘learnt’ – for example, you can become anxious after seeing someone else
acting in an anxious way. Usually this happens when children see their parent/significant adult in their life
being scared of something – for example, spiders.

With time, the child also develops a fear of spiders and ‘learns’ this anxious behaviour. However, for
many people there is no obvious trigger for their anxiety and it is just something that they develop.

The next section of this guide goes into further detail about the causes of anxiety.