Inherited Anxiety

 To start off with the nature aspect of things I believe that anxiety seems to run in my family, but the way we each cope with it reflects our nurture. When I’m overwhelmed with being put under stress, I feel everything intensely: I get anxious, and need time alone to regulate. I’ve learned how to hold myself together on the outside, even when I’m emotionally unraveling inside; I feel like that was a learned behavior my mom taught me to handle myself well, and respectfully. My mom handles stress quite like me but with more strength. She may shut down at the moment, then processes privately, then regroups to deal with the problem. She rarely shows vulnerability, and that kind of emotional control came from her having to mature early on in life. My grandmother expresses stress differently. She reacts with intensity; her anxiety often turns into anger, and she externalizes her emotions much more than my mom or I do; I believe this was a product of her environment where she may have felt to be on survival mode. “Common mental disorders like depression and anxiety are likely the result of a combination of life experiences, environment, and genetic variation... These variations can impact how your genes are turned ‘on’ and ‘off’ throughout life and play a role in the onset of some diseases” (National Institute of Mental Health, N.D.).  This reinforces the concept of "nature" in the nature vs. nurture debate, suggesting that inherited genetics can contribute significantly to the propensity for anxiety and other mental disorders. These changes can impact how the brain responds to stress, meaning that while anxiety may be passed down genetically, our environment shapes how we express and regulate it.