I get upset whenever I see people refer to their anxiety as a "Mental Illness", while I understand that there are varying degrees of anxiety, and degrees on how much it affects someones life and turns into a "disorder" but that does not mean it is classified as a Mental Illness.
If everyone experiences anxiety, anxiety is a natural emotion that the body experiences in response to stressors. These stressors also vary, and depending on the coping mechanisms each person has, or different fears each person has, anxiety is very different depending on each person. For example if someone is terrified of snakes, and you make them stick their hand in a box filled with snakes - he freaks out, trembles in fear, has all the symptoms related to anxiety, because his fears are being realized and confronted. That does not mean that man has a mental illness, it means his fears are being met face to face. It is a natural body response to fear.
No one would say that man afraid of snakes, has a mental illness because of his acute reaction to stress or anxiety with snakes.

Fears are different for everyone.
One person has anxiety about a box of snakes, one person has anxiety about performance at work or being embarrassed in front of colleagues.
It depends on how well a person manages their anxiety, and how this anxiety affects their daily life. But anxiety isn't a mental illness. Mental illness to me means something more like psychosis, hallucinating, or losing touch with reality or something along those lines.
Saying anxiety is a mental illness is using the term mental illness too liberally.
Anxiety turns into a disorder by professionals when a person has no learned coping skills to deal with their fears, if they are forced to confront their fears every day.
You wouldn't expect someone terrified of snakes to become a snake charmer. Well, if someone has performance anxiety at work, unlucky for them, you need to work to live, it just so happens their fears are something society expects from them every day. They get labeled by the pharmaceutical companies who want to make money by drugging them up as having an anxiety disorder, and they go through life thinking they have a mental illness.
It comes down to fears. It comes down to how well you manage being confronted by your individual fears. This doesn't equal mental illness to me.
Just because I have issues with anxiety, I do not label myself as being mentally sick.
Please tell me your thoughts on this. Do you think anxiety should be classified as a mental illness if one does not know how to manage their anxiety or their responses to their fears?