ABSTRACT
To understand anxiety disorder means to understand both anxiety and disorder as scienti c ideas. People are anxious about many di erent things to many di erent degrees. But nearly everyone knows anxiety from rsthand experience. We speak of ourselves as feeling anxious, tense, nervous, afraid, worried, scared, and the like. We use these terms not only to describe feelings but also to explain behaviors. We say things like, “She le because she was afraid” or “He couldn’t speak because he was too nervous.” Scientists too hold that fear and anxiety, terms this chapter will use as synonyms, cause many behaviors, normal and abnormal, adaptive and maladaptive. is anxiety theory of behavior is widely believed. But the meaning of anxiety and its power to strongly in uence behavior are far from clear.
