Is anxiety a disease? NO. Never has been, never will be.

This text applies only to diagnoses that include fear of the anxiety, which is what most people consult a doctor about. Thus not GAD, OCD, PTSD, etc. They are not considered anxiety disorders here, but worry diagnoses in this context. Without fear of the anxiety there is no reason to seek urgent medical attention and many anxiety diagnoses would not exist.

The article is not some kind of idea, but science that can be tested, which the disease model cannot, since it is based on evidence that something works for some, but evidence and science are not the same. This is forgotten when talking about anxiety. All research, etc., is presented as facts, but the truth is that it is far from that, as the article will uncover.

How are you supposed to become anxiety-free if you never get the right explanation?

The healthcare system has chosen to call the experience of a sudden and seemingly unexplained adrenaline rush a mental illness, simply because it is unpleasant and they couldn’t explain it any other way 75 years ago. Many disease theories have since emerged, but none have ever been proven in those 75 years. Still, the pathologizing of normal adrenaline-related discomfort continues without a single piece of biological evidence, based solely on assumption and guesswork.

It is assumed that the distress is caused by mental illness, since nothing physical can be observed. Therefore factors such as genes, trauma, chemical imbalance, dysregulation or other causes were introduced as explanatory reasons — without evidence.

But adrenaline is precisely designed to be unpleasant so that we react to it, which is well known today but not mentioned. That adrenaline creates disease symptoms does not make it a disease.

One cannot experience anxiety without discomfort. With rational anxiety we do not notice the discomfort because we act on a cause and forget it afterwards. We burn off the adrenaline through action. Afterwards everything is normal again. You are not ill; the only thing that has changed is that a memory of the discomfort has now been created. It is that memory that makes us seek out the doctor, not an illness, but the memory of the discomfort. It is action on a cause that is lacking in irrational anxiety. Therefore we experience the adrenaline as unpleasant and end up panicking about the feeling instead of acting.

We know it’s memory that triggers more anxiety because: let’s assume you experienced anxiety today in the supermarket, and you think about it for the rest of the day. When you wake up the next morning, you’ve magically forgotten all about the episode. Would you still think about and fear more anxiety? Of course not. You can’t fear something you have no recollection of. That’s why you only developed anxiety after the first time you experienced it; until then you probably lived fine without thoughts about the anxiety.

The idea is that we should flee from discomfort to survive a dangerous situation. Our discomfort-avoidance system ensures that. That system reacts to, for example, a hot stove, but also to the discomfort of adrenaline. But since we cannot flee from an internal adrenaline discomfort, the body panics instead.

A very important point: Adrenaline creates the discomfort, but it is our discomfort system that makes us react. If we don’t, panic arises. That system is never mentioned in connection with anxiety, even though it is crucial for producing the panic. That system is described in one of my other articles.

So why has a normal biological adrenaline-induced discomfort become a mental illness when it is experienced without a rational cause?

It happened in the past, before people fully understood adrenaline’s role in also producing irrational feelings of anxiety. Since there are no physical symptoms after the adrenaline has been metabolized in the body, there was only the patient’s explanations to interpret. Because all explanations were always identical due to the same adrenaline effect on everyone’s body, those explanations were labeled as anxiety symptoms, when in reality they are adrenaline symptoms. For lack of an understanding of adrenaline, the word “anxiety” was used to describe adrenaline symptoms, since it ironically exactly described the adrenaline symptoms without people being aware of it in 1950, when the word “anxiety” was introduced as an explanation for the symptoms.

The only reason the discomfort from adrenaline has become an illness is that it challenges us mentally and we therefore seek help.

Before the diagnoses, anxiety wasn’t the main problem, because it’s the medicalization that creates all the subsequent thoughts that keep the anxiety going.

Before the diagnoses, adrenaline was also unpleasant, but because it wasn’t treated as an illness, it didn’t lead to the same internal conclusion: “I’m sick.”

I know this because I lived 16 years without a diagnosis, from 1979, when SSRIs did not exist, until 1995, when I heard the word “anxiety” for the first time and received my first diagnosis and was prescribed SSRI medication, much to my regret today.

From that day anxiety became a problem and worsened from something that merely irritated me to live with — I knew it always passed — to a conscious conviction that I was ill. Attacks and symptoms became more frequent, and occurred in more and more situations, whereas in the previous 16 years I had only experienced adrenaline.

The memory of my first attack in 1979, which triggered the anxiety now and then, was now reinforced by a conviction of illness that was triggered more and more often and in more and more places. This continued for the next 21 years until in 2016 I said stop — enough of this anxiety — and began to investigate the matter myself. I wanted to investigate what was being overlooked, which led to my complete freedom from anxiety within a few months in 2017.

I came across a list of adrenaline symptoms online and thought, that’s what I’m experiencing. Wow, so I’m not sick at all if it’s adrenaline that’s causing the feeling. Why has no one told me that all these years? Why does the doctor tell me it’s anxiety symptoms and that I’m ill, if it’s just the adrenaline symptoms creating the discomfort I’m afraid of experiencing again?

That led me to drop the word anxiety and only refer to my symptoms as adrenaline symptoms. Why should I continue to call them anxiety symptoms when I now knew they were merely adrenaline symptoms? I went from saying the anxiety was coming to saying I could feel the adrenaline. As mentioned, a few months later I was free of anxiety and have been so ever since. I didn’t fear the adrenaline, because I understood it was just body chemistry and not an illness. The fear and anxious thoughts disappeared quickly because I no longer feared the symptoms. No one fears adrenaline symptoms, but everyone fears anxiety symptoms. The brain doesn’t fear the phrase adrenaline symptoms but the phrase anxiety symptoms.

It is important to distinguish between biology and concepts when it comes to anxiety. Anxiety is a concept, a word we invented to describe the unpleasant adrenaline symptoms. Anxiety is therefore not a biological condition that one can suffer from or be ill with.

Adrenaline, however, is biological. That’s why we know that the symptoms we are experiencing are adrenaline symptoms and not anxiety symptoms.

Therefore I can say with certainty that anxiety has nothing to do with illness, but is your memory of the initial discomfort. Anxiety requires memory in order to persist into tomorrow. When I removed that memory, by not using the word “anxiety,” I was set free. I told the doctor and he said that just because it helped me doesn’t mean it helps others. At that point I knew I couldn’t expect help that way. The thing is, however, that since 2018 I have offered the method freely online, mostly in the online anxiety groups where the “treatment-resistant” go when they are given up on by the system and put on decades of medication, and I hear again and again how people became free of anxiety. That is enough for me.

It is my claim that almost everyone can become anxiety-free if they receive the correct adrenaline explanation as the first immediate calming intervention at the first contact with the doctor after a panic attack. Today you get a diagnosis and are sent home with medication that may take effect in 4–8 weeks, which only worsens the anxiety during that period. There is no immediate help where you need it most, in the most vulnerable time right after the first attack or initial symptoms.

Why don’t we, today, have a reassuring, here-and-now explanation in the healthcare system? If that doesn’t work, one can resort to diagnoses after a few days. But the first intervention should always be reassurance instead of pathologizing.

My last doctor’s visit clearly shows the problem: that there is only one explanation in the system. If I hadn’t stopped and looked into the matter myself, I would have carried the anxiety with me to the grave, since I was put on medication by various doctors and psychiatrists who all had the same old story that I have an anxiety disorder I would have to learn to live with for the rest of my life. All of it because I feared the adrenaline-induced discomfort again.

Of course it is not the doctors’ fault; they merely pass on what they learned in medical school. No doctors examine the correctness of what they learn. No doctors investigate why patients come back again and again, even though they receive the “right” treatment. Doctors are trained to look for symptoms of disease, not to provide logical or biological explanations involving adrenaline.

The problem is the textbooks, because they are never updated with new knowledge. One professor in one generation writes the same as a professor in the next generation. Everyone learns the old assumptions from the 1950s. Even in the publication of the DSM-5 manual, adrenaline symptoms are not mentioned a single time, which is strange when you know that it is adrenaline that produces the (anxiety) symptoms. The same applies to almost all anxiety self-help books. Adrenaline is not mentioned. Cortisol is mentioned three times in DSM-5. That says something about the mindset in psychiatry. The small amount of new knowledge that is implemented, such as Clark’s panic model from 1986, is placed within the disease framework, where misinterpretation becomes a mental disorder instead of being explained for what it is, a cognitive error.

Fortunately, I can tell you another truth. A scientific truth. You are not mentally ill; you merely fear the discomfort that adrenaline creates in your body. You fear it so much that you are willing to do anything to avoid it again. We know that because, without the adrenaline discomfort, you would not seek medical help. Why would you?

The narrative of illness is where the problem arises. The illness narrative makes you experience it again instead of stopping it. How will you ever be free of anxiety when you are constantly told that you are sick and must take medication for your illness? Can you see the problem? It’s impossible for most people.

Some people naturally become free of anxiety, but it’s not because of the treatment; it’s because at some point during the process they realize they are not sick.

The challenge is that any discomfort or deviant behavior is being pathologized as mental illness today. Our behavior is being medicalized instead of trying to understand it. This happens because there is no treatment and no money in understanding and logic. Research funding goes to the study of disease, not to logic. People don’t go to the doctor to get a logical explanation but to investigate symptoms of illness. Therefore the practice of treating anxiety isn’t changed from within either.

For doctors it makes sense to think of it as a disease, but that’s not correct. It doesn’t become a disease just by calling it one. And when you treat something that is not a disease as if it were, the treatments naturally do not help. It becomes treatment of a fear of experiencing illness (discomfort).

Many people become free of anxiety for a while and then need treatment again. This happens because they never processed the memory of the discomfort, but were only treated for the symptoms, which does not remove the memory traces of the adrenaline-induced distress. Therefore the memory triggers the anxiety again if, among other things, new challenges arise in life later. When you then see the doctor they will typically say that the anxiety has returned; you should probably prepare to live with the anxiety given all the relapses you have experienced. But the truth is that it is the memory that has returned, not the anxiety. No one experiences recurring anxiety without first having stored memories of the initial anxiety.

What this article aims to clarify is that anxiety is not a disease. We humans have chosen to call it a disease because of a lack of knowledge in the past and because the discomfort caused by adrenaline has always challenged us when it is released, apparently without cause.

The real challenge is that adrenaline affects many organs at the same time. Each organ produces a symptom. It is all the concurrent organ symptoms that create the acute feeling of illness we experience and panic about.

There is always a cause. The first experience is usually due to some kind of misinterpretation of bodily signals or symptoms, which triggers the real wave of anxiety, and all subsequent anxiety is triggered by the memory of the initial anxious discomfort. A memory that is reinforced by pathologizing and repeated episodes and symptoms.

Now it’s up to you whether you’d prefer an adrenaline-based explanation for the discomfort you experienced, or an anxiety diagnosis, medication, or years of therapy in the future without understanding what you really experience when you feel unpleasant symptoms.

Receiving an anxiety diagnosis is no different from receiving a cancer diagnosis: some accept it and carry on living, others panic. That impact applies to all negative diagnoses. Therefore it should be considered which words are used and how they are delivered.

If you happen to have objections to the text, you can start by explaining to me, or better yet to yourself, what creates the anxious discomfort if it’s not the normal adrenaline symptoms. I’m not talking about the cause of why you experience the anxiety, since that’s not what we fear afterwards, but the feeling of the symptoms. If adrenaline doesn’t create the discomfort, then what? Serotonin deficiency, genetics, trauma, or?

In this way we can remove all causes of anxiety and focus only on the discomfort caused by adrenaline. Anxiety can easily arise without the acknowledged causes, but without adrenaline anxiety cannot arise. That tells us we are looking in the wrong place. People look at causes, when in reality it is the adrenaline-related discomfort that creates all the problems afterward.

Serotonin deficiency, dysregulation, genetics, trauma, or other biopsychosocial causes do not create discomfort; adrenaline does. Thus, it is the fear of the adrenaline that should be addressed, not the causes.

Conclusion.

It is said that anxiety causes functional impairment and avoidance behavior. But the reality is that you did not have functional impairment or avoidance behavior before you experienced the anxiety. The impairment and avoidance are created by the diagnosis. Before you went to the doctor you had merely experienced an involuntary adrenaline-related discomfort, but in the weeks after the diagnosis the avoidance and impairment are produced because of the lack of immediate here-and-now treatment and, most importantly, the lack of a biological (adrenaline) explanation at the first doctor’s visit.

Something to think about: How the doctor diagnoses your anxiety. You have anxiety because you exhibit anxiety symptoms. And you experience anxiety symptoms because you have anxiety.

And so the discussion among professionals is closed.

The reality, however, is this: You have anxiety because you experience involuntary adrenaline symptoms. And you experience involuntary adrenaline symptoms because you have misinterpreted something in your body. You have misinterpreted it because of one out of a thousand causes. Illness is only one per thousand of the causes.

Any doctor or professor is now welcome to disprove the text by proving that I still have anxiety and see whether I will experience it again.

We can even swap clients and see who “heals” the most over the next year.

We can do a small test.

The doctor may try to convince my clients that they are not just experiencing adrenaline symptoms but rather anxiety symptoms.

So I will convince the doctor’s patients that their anxiety is just adrenaline symptoms.

So what makes a layman, an IT guy, think he can contradict the entire anxiety treatment system?

He does it because logic defeats disease assumptions that cannot be proven.

It is a fact that adrenaline creates the discomfort. It is a fact that memory creates the ongoing anxiety. It is a fact that anxiety as a biological disease does not occur in nature. It is a fact that illness does not create anxiety. Thoughts of illness trigger adrenaline. It is a fact that the serotonin deficiency theory cannot be documented. I know this because I have obtained access to records from the Danish authorities. They could not produce a document that says that anxiety is a disease. They cannot document why one is not tested for a serotonin deficiency before a prescription of SSRIs. They cannot document a minimum and maximum value for serotonin levels. In other words, when it is necessary to prescribe them.

No professional has ever investigated whether anxiety can be anything other than an illness, for the simple reason that that’s what they were taught. In my industry, IT, it’s very different: we investigate everything, we reverse-engineer everything to double-check everything before we publish. Therefore there have been no articles like this online—until now.

Think about it: how much does it cost the health system to receive all those who call 112, 911 or go to the emergency room after their first panic attack, where it usually ends with them being sent home with the message, “we can’t find anything, it was probably a panic attack.” Why don’t they have a leaflet there that explains the biology, instead of sending people home with the fear of experiencing the anxiety again? I myself was one of those people in 1979. Today I’m ashamed that an adrenaline-related discomfort made me react like that, since I now know the cause — body chemistry. We have learned nothing in the roughly 50 years that have passed.

The truth is that the healthcare system lacks the biological evidence for “the disease”. The misinterpretation theory can be tested; the healthcare system’s disease model cannot.

The purpose of the articles has been to convince you that what you are experiencing is normal — yes, unpleasant adrenaline symptoms and not anxiety symptoms.

Once you understand it, the fear disappears and the symptoms do not occur. It’s logic. It’s logic because that’s how the body works. Pathologizing cannot change that.

So if you can get yourself to do it, stop using the word “anxiety.” Use only the word “adrenaline.” Replace “I have anxiety” with “I’m not sick, I feel adrenaline.” If you can do that, you will, in a short time, experience something you didn’t think was possible.

Thomas Fogh Vinter

P.S. The word “anxiety” creates more anxiety.