Your heartbeat quickens, a trickle of sweat runs down your back, and this feeling of unease reaches the tip of your fingers. What is happening? All your muscles begin to tense up and your lungs feel heavy. As the world spin faster with you on its axis, you momentarily lose the notion of time and space.
This shortness of breath and heart palpitations are symptoms of an anxiety attack. It is a nervous disorder where worry and nervousness overpower all other emotions, it is a feeling of dread that something imminent is about to happen and there is no turning back.
We will never know what’s around the corner. It could be everything. Or it could be nothing. But those plagued by anxiety are certain the boogeyman lies waiting for the perfect time to strike.
A person experiencing anxiety sends signals to the brain, which it then interprets as a dangerous situation.
Adrenaline is released and the flight or fight response is activated.
Anxiety can be triggered by daily situations that we have no control over. Like clockwork or a train that arrives to the station on time, the brain without pause or error will feel it is imminent danger, and therefore trigger an attack.
This disorder is so insidious it can affect different areas of a person’s life, from sleeping patterns to the relationships they have. When the brain stops feeling threatened, the symptoms will lessen and a sense of calm will wash across the body.
In Anxious Anticipation is a photographic series created by Aaron Tilley, and art director Kyle Bean, where they portray different stressful scenarios. A moment of imminent disaster frozen in time to provoke feelings of fear, danger, and expectation.
This series is a great experiment to prove how our brains perceive dangerous situations and where there are no triggers physically present to provoke a response.
This feeling of permanent suspense that these images evoke perfectly describe the way a person with anxiety feels.
They are always expecting something to happen, and in the blink of an eye, calmness is substituted for involuntary suffering.
Can you imagine spending the rest of your life waiting for something bad to happen and feeling as if control is just an illusion? When something so simple as public speaking or going to a party triggers internal chaos?
It is almost impossible to fully empathize with people who suffer from this disorder, and yet, In Anxious Anticipation, achieves it in a very visual way.
The series offers a glimpse into the dark pit of mixed feelings anxious people experience every day of their lives.
