Our emotional health is based on both our genetics and our life experience.  The complex interplay between our biological hardwiring for survival and our experiential learning creates emotional reactions that can help or hinder us in pursuing our life activities and goals.  Each of us has situations that make us uncomfortable, anxious or sad, which we find a way to manage in the short term.  When those feelings and attitudes prevent us from engaging in everyday life activities or relationships and extend for a period of time they become labeled as a "disorder."