What are some misconceptions about anxiety?

One misconception about anxiety is that anxiety itself is bad. People spend a lot of their lives trying to avoid bad emotions. They've labeled sadness as bad and fear as bad and anxiety as bad. Honestly, they're there to help people. The mind created these things to help people in situations. Anxiety makes people practice so they don't make mistakes. It makes people pay more attention when they're prone to make a mistake. When they're driving on an icy road in Idaho, it makes them grip the steering wheel, dilate the eyes to pay more attention, and move the foot over the brake instead of the gas to be safer so they don't wreck. Anxiety saves and helps people. People shouldn't avoid it.

Another misconception is that anxiety happens alone. People will assume a person has depression or anxiety. They somehow think that if a person has both, he or she must have bipolar disorder or something like that. Fifty-eight percent of people who have a depressive disorder also have an anxiety disorder. Thirty percent of people with anxiety also have an alcohol and drug use problem. The same is true of attention deficit disorder. Thirty percent of people with anxiety disorders also have attention deficit disorders. They often go together.