Every person feels anxious at some point in their life, whether it’s a final football match, a job interview, going on a date night, or giving a public speech for the first time.
Some anxiety in life is helpful- it helps us react appropriately to stresses or potential threats, by focusing our attention and quickening our reflexes. It usually settles once the stressful situation goes away.
Anxiety is when those feelings of fear and worry do not go away, they are extreme for the situation, and you can’t easily control them. When an anxiety condition is severe or presents all the time, it is hard for a person to go on with daily life activities.
Anxiety disorder is a mental health condition that occurs when feelings of worry, fear, or anxiety are significant enough to interfere with your everyday life.
Anxiety can also cause moderate to severe physical symptoms like pain, stomach cramps, or a pounding heart. For some people, these physical symptoms can be the primary concern.
Anxiety also affects your life, such as your ability to cope, perform at college or work, and adversely affect your relationships with family, friends, and other near ones.
It is sometimes common for people with anxiety to feel depressed. The symptoms of both anxiety and depression can overlap.
Continually worrying and other symptoms of anxiety can creep up on you gradually. It also makes it hard to know how much worrying is too much.
Some common symptoms of anxiety include:
If a person has any of the above symptoms, they might want to look at the different types of anxiety disorders explained below.
Here are different kinds of anxiety disorders; however, do not diagnose your anxiety just by reading the information given below. For proper diagnosis and determination of your anxiety disorder, visit a specialist. You might find this information useful when you visit a doctor.
There are numerous kinds of anxiety disorders. Given below are the anxiety disorders that are most commonly found in the people of the United States.
Generalized anxiety disorder or GAD is when people start worrying about several things on a day-to-day basis for more than six months. It generally affects younger adults, and usually women more than men. The anxiety in this type of anxiety disorder is all about general life circumstances and a wide range of situations and issues, and not just a particular event. It may be hard to control generalized anxiety as it makes its way into daily life.
Phobias are irrational and extreme fears about a specific thing. The fear or worry can be so high that the person goes to a great extent to avoid it, even when it is harmless. For example, social phobias are the fear of being embarrassed or judged in public, even in everyday situations like while eating, speaking, or walking in public places. The people living with social phobia can also fear or worry about morning small-talks.
Another type of phobia that is commonly found in people is agoraphobia. It is the fear of open spaces or closed places. It is mainly a fear of being locked in, or away from a safe person or place. It can be extremely frightening and disabling and can make people unable to leave their homes.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD is when a person has intrusive, unwanted, persistent, or repetitive thoughts, ideas, feelings, or obsessions, which cause anxiety. Then they carry out actions to get rid of those thoughts and reduce anxiety. For example, a person may be afraid of germs and try to may try to relieve anxiety through repeated handwashing or not touching things like doorknobs.
The person may know that these thoughts are unreasonable but not be able to stop them. When your OCD is severe, and you leave it untreated, it can be very distressing and get in your daily work, school, or college life, and healthy living at home.
Post-traumatic stress disorder, otherwise called PTSD, can be defined as a reaction to a stressful event outside the range of daily life experiences when a person feels very threatened or unsafe. These are rare and unusual experiences, such as a massive car accident, a violent attack, a war, a verbal, physical, or sexual attack assault, or some natural disaster.
Post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms include irritability, flashbacks, anxiety, nightmares, and avoiding situations that might bring memories of the event.
Panic disorder is a very prevalent type of anxiety disorder. More than 30% of the total population of the United States suffers from panic disorder. It happens when a person has a panic attack. Panic attacks would be intense and extreme feelings of anxiety and fear along with some physical symptoms and overwhelming sensations that a person has if they were in great danger, such as feeling faint, pounding heart, sweating, nausea, shaky limbs, discomfort in breathing, chest pain, and feelings of losing control. The symptoms occur and peak quickly. The effects can be severe enough for a person experiencing a panic attack to think that they are dying. Despite being very uncomfortable and frightening, they are not life-threatening.
Effective treatment techniques help you learn how to control your anxiety to make yourself comfortable and healthy again. The type of treatment you should follow depends upon the kind of anxiety you have.
For mild symptoms of anxiety, a doctor may suggest lifestyle changes like regular physical exercise and reduction of stress levels. You may also try therapies and other means to reduce and deal with your anxiety.
When the symptoms of anxiety are moderate to severe, medical, or psychological treatment options could be the best choice for the management and treatment of anxiety disorders.
Psychological treatments are also known as talking therapies. They can help you change your thinking pattern, so you can keep control of your anxiety and reduce irrational fears and worries.
There are several different types of effective psychological treatments for the management of anxiety. Some people prefer to work on one with a professional, while others may choose to go out for a group therapy session.
The different types of psychological therapies useful in anxiety treatment are:
Researches show that psychological therapies are the most effective and safe treatment options for people suffering from anxiety. However, if anxiety is severe medical treatments may be helpful.
There is a range of procedures you can attempt to deal with your anxiety. What works is diverse for everybody, and it can take some effort to discover the methods that work best for you. But remember, if your anxiety is demonstrating hard to oversee, look for help from a professional doctor.
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