What is Anxiety?
Occasional anxiety is a normal part of life. You might feel anxious when faced with a problem at work, before taking a test, or making an important decision. But anxiety disorders involve more than temporary worry or fear. For a person with an anxiety disorder, the anxiety does not go away and can get worse over time. The feelings can interfere with daily activities such as job performance, school work, and relationships.
There are several different types of anxiety disorders. Examples include generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder.
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People with generalized anxiety disorder display excessive anxiety or worry for months and face several anxiety-related symptoms.
Generalized anxiety disorder symptoms include:
- Restlessness or feeling wound-up or on edge
- Being easily fatigued
- Difficulty concentrating or having their minds go blank
- Irritability
- Muscle tension
- Difficulty controlling the worry
- Sleep problems (difficulty falling or staying asleep or restless, unsatisfying sleep)
Obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD, can be a very destructive anxiety disorder.
- Obsessions:Obsessions are thought based. They’re an intrusive, uncontrollable preoccupation with a specific thought, usually a negative or fearful thought, that a person simply cannot shake no matter how hard they try.
- Compulsions:Compulsions are behavior based. They’re a “need” to perform an action or activity in response to an obsession, often in a very specific way, and as hard as the person tries, they can’t stop themselves from performing the behavior. These actions continue for more than one hour a day.
People with panic disorder have recurrent unexpected panic attacks, which are sudden periods of intense fear that may include palpitations, pounding heart, or accelerated heart rate; sweating; trembling or shaking; sensations of shortness of breath, smothering, or choking; and feeling of impending doom.
Panic disorder symptoms include:
- Sudden and repeated attacks of intense fear
- Feelings of being out of control during a panic attack
- Intense worries about when the next attack will happen
- Fear or avoidance of places where panic attacks have occurred in the past
PTSD affects people both psychologically and physically. In most cases, the person with PTSD is the one that experienced the traumatic event, but it’s possible to get PTSD by simply witnessing an event or injury, or even simply discovering that someone close to you dealt with a traumatic event.
Symptoms include:
- Nightmares/Flashbacks
- Depression/Irritability
- Avoidance of Triggers
- Social Withdrawal
- Hyper Vigilance
People with social anxiety disorder (sometimes called “social phobia”) have a marked fear of social or performance situations in which they expect to feel embarrassed, judged, rejected, or fearful of offending others.
Social anxiety disorder symptoms include:
- Being very afraid that other people will judge them
- Worrying for days or weeks before an event where other people will be
- Staying away from places where there are other people
- Having a hard time making friends and keeping friends
Signs of Anxiety?
- Breathing Difficulties
- Chest Pain
- Chills
- Concentration Problems
- Cough
- Depersonalization
- Difficulty Speaking
- Dizziness
- Fear
- Headaches
- Hyperventilation
- Insomnia/Drowsiness
- Lightheadedness
- Low Energy
- Nausea
- Nervousness
- Shallow Breathing
- Sweating
How we treat Anxiety?
Quick Tip: No two people are affected the same way by anxiety and there is no “one-size-fits-all” for treatment. It may take some trial and error to find the treatment that works best for you.
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