A Research on Struggle with Anxiety

A natural response to any danger or threat from environment is anxiety. Basically anxiety is derived from a latin word “anxietas” ( trouble, to choke). Anxiety is a normal human emotion but its presence in range of anxiety disorder, makes it an important clinical focus. People normally get anxious for there daily life routine work forexample for exam. Students likely to take stress about there exam but after they finish there exam they feel relax . but things are different for those who suffer with anxiety because they wont feel relax after there exam is over, that continous excessive worry throughout the day leads to GAD (Generaized Anxiety Disorder).

I am suffering with anxiety specifically GAD and that’s why I want to talk about it. I would like to find out that only I am facing this problem or other children or adults too. My focus will remain on showing how anxiety affects females and by showing my emotions of what I feel during those attacks. I am using art therapy in the form of Installation (theraputic installation). My medium will be photography for showing how anxiety affects me.

Thesis Statement

My thesis topic is woman anxiety. My work revolves around my struggles with mental illness and how it affects me mentally and physically and I will come up with a temporary therapy for controlling it.

Significance:

I want to overcome my fear and worries and those excessive thought that leads me get panic about normal worries.  In our society we have people who don’t understand the feeling of a person who is suffering from anxiety they think it’s normal until it leads anxiety to anxiety disorder.

Woman should talk about their fears and feelings and there excessive thought.

Types of Anxiety: There are different types of anxiety. These are following:

• Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)

1. Social anxiety
2. Panic disorder
3. Agoraphobia
4. Phobias

• Post-Traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Obsessive-Compulsive disorder (OCD)

Generalized Anxiety Disorder: (GAD) It is an excessive worry about everyday life events with no obvious reasons for worry.

Social Anxiety: It’s a fear to get socially interacted with people.

Panic Disorder: Panic disorder causes panic attacks which are sudden feeling of fear when there is no real danger.

Agoraphobia: It is a type of anxiety that gives you fear about any place or situation that might causes you to panic or get embarrassed.

Phobias: It is an excessive worry about an object or situation. For example fear of height, fear of spiders etc.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): It’s a disorder that can develop after experiencing or seeing extremely traumatic events.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: It is a disorder in which person gets obsessed with thoughts or images or perform certain routines repeatedly. These are all types of anxiety explaining their own selves. I will work on generalized anxiety disorder and how I can keep myself calm and distract my mind while suffering from it.

Objectives: Researcher wants to highlight the fact that how anxiety affects a person.

• Researcher wants to work on it to overcome her fear and wants to make it understandable for others too.
• To highlight the reasons that takes her towards her fear and stress.
• To highlight what it feels like to feel anxious over everything.

Literature Review:

Art and anxiety is a very old combination, many artist already worked on in it. Anxiety is basically fight or flight system, the system your body uses to keep you safe from harm.Anxiety is with us since people of early age were worried about being trapped by mammoths. If we talk about anxiety and its history than we will came to know how those people used to deal anxiety and what they think of woman who were suffering with it. During ancient Greece period, people used to think that anxiety’s “hysterical behavior was caused by uterus When we talk about early Renaissance period women who were prone to “hysteria” were also accused of being witches. During Victorian Era woman with “hysterical” were thought as crazy. That tension was built in those because of staying in door all the time and not doing any job. After 1950’s most modern techniques of treating anxiety came in to existence.one of the therapy was fear exposure therapy. Ten years later people started to realize that antidepressants can be used for treating anxiety as well as depression. In 1980’s there was a creation of a term ‘Anxiety disorder’. In 1990 it was discovered that anti-depressant type drugs can be us for treating anxiety.

Many Artists portrayed anxiety in their artwork. Salvador Dali, Bourgeois, Francisco Goya al, of them contributed to anxious art. There personal history lends them to unique perspective about this issue. Likewise in modern history we still have artists who are doing interactive installation for the people. Candy Chang is behind the viral installation “Before I Die”.Snoosphere was a responsive installation by Lull Studio where audiences can touch, and explore. Methodology: Design for study: As a student of graphics I have executed my work in graphics. I am using digital camera and software like Photoshop and illustrator for it. The purpose behind using camera is that I want to photograph those expressions and what a woman feel during anxiety attacks and I am editing those pictures on Photoshop CC and illustrator as it gives life to my pictures.

And I am also making a therapeutic installation for anxiety. Strategic plan: After all the required research that I’ve done I‘ve made an assumptions and concepts that I have observed a lot in the whole process extrude in the form of photographs i took. I am taking photographs depicting anxiety emotions. I am also doing installation for anxiety patients that will be interactive and therapeutic. During my experimentations I found black shopping bags as the color black depicts depression and anxiety itself. I’ve done repetition of black shopping bags and filled them in empty spaces or room. I filled black shopping bags with balloons with air in it. I also did experimentation of adding water in balloons but it gets heavy and starts hanging so I preferred and experimented with air in it. When I started working on it the main issue for me was finding black shopping bags as it is banned now but still I searched for them and found it and doing so I explore new places and it helped me capturing people dealing with anxiety and depression. Baggers and poor woman struggling for their livings depicts anxiety in perfect way than anyone else.

Material:

Material required for the execution of my product.

Installation:

For installation I used

• Black shopping bags
• Balloons
• Fish wires
• Nails
• Hammer
• Air balloon pump

Photography:

For photography I used

• Canon 600D camera
• Lens 18-55mm

Target Group:

My target group is from 18 to 80 year woman. The purpose of choosing teenagers is because they can mold their thoughts according to aspects of life and the purpose of choosing adult woman is because many of them work or got married and suffers with lots of stress and trauma in their lives so my installation will be temporary therapeutic for them. Another purpose of using black shopping bag is because it actually defines the thin delicate layer of my fear and thoughts.

Conclusion:

While working on my installation and photography I have learned that I don’t have to accept all of my thoughts and helping others fighting there demons helped me fighting mine.

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