Anxiety serves as a natural response to stress, a signal from your brain warning you about potential threats. It’s a common emotion experienced by everyone, arising in various situations like confronting work-related challenges, facing exams, or making significant decisions. However, anxiety disorders transcend transient worries, persisting and intensifying over time. Unlike fleeting anxiety, these disorders linger and can disrupt daily functioning, impacting tasks like work performance, academic pursuits, and interpersonal relationships.
Physical symptoms like a racing heart and sweating often accompany these feelings. While it’s normal to experience some anxiety, such as before a big test or interview, anxiety disorders involve more severe and persistent symptoms. They can interfere with daily functioning, lead to overreactions to triggers, and make it difficult to control responses to situations.
Managing & Treating Anxiety
Behavioral Therapy
Central to behavioral therapy is exposure, a technique aimed at desensitizing oneself to fears by intentionally facing them. Through exposure, individuals can reevaluate the perceived danger or threat associated with a situation or trigger.
The steps involved in exposure therapy include:
- Prioritize fears based on their perceived threat level.
- Start by addressing less intimidating fears.
- Contemplate the feared scenario, imagining oneself experiencing it, and analyze the associated fears.
- Develop a systematic plan comprising small, manageable steps, such as gradually reducing the distance from the feared object or situation.
- Resist the temptation to flee, employing relaxation techniques, controlled breathing, and positive affirmations to manage anxiety.
- Reflect on the experience afterward, acknowledging that no harm occurred.
- Repeat exposure exercises regularly to bolster confidence in handling similar situations.
Cognitive Therapy
Cognitive therapy revolves around modifying thought patterns and beliefs that contribute to and exacerbate anxiety. For instance, someone with social phobia may amplify their anxiety disorder with negative thoughts like, “Everyone finds me dull.”
Strategies employed in cognitive therapy include:
- Engaging in rational self-talk.
- Reality testing.
- Attention redirection.
- Cognitive challenging.
- Cognitive restructuring involves monitoring and challenging negative self-talk and beliefs.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness serves as a potent antidote to anxiety, redirecting attention to the present moment and disengaging from unhelpful thoughts.
Amidst anxious episodes, individuals often find themselves entangled in distressing thoughts. It encourages individuals to ground themselves in the here and now, fostering mental clarity and emotional resilience.
As mindfulness gains popularity for its therapeutic benefits, numerous resources are available to aid individuals in cultivating a mindfulness practice tailored to their needs.
Types of Anxiety Disorder
Anxiety manifests in various forms, with four primary types being discussed here. While there are other interconnected disorders such as OCD, PTSD, separation anxiety, and agoraphobia, this article specifically directs attention to the following:
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
The most prevalent form, GAD leads individuals to feel persistently anxious and apprehensive, often without an immediate trigger. Such individuals anticipate worst-case scenarios and struggle to manage these negative emotions. This chronic worry negatively impacts daily life, hindering focus, relationships, sleep, eating habits, and work performance. Symptoms of GAD may appear as a result of medication or substance usage. Additionally, certain health conditions like hyperthyroidism, which elevate hormone levels, can lead to heightened bodily responses. Environmental stressors and hereditary factors can also trigger GAD. Furthermore, chronic illnesses and diseases might worsen GAD symptoms.
Social Anxiety
Social anxiety, or social phobia, induces an intense fear of social situations and public performance. Even routine interactions can provoke fear of ridicule, humiliation, or judgement. Large gatherings or unfamiliar company may evoke discomfort, making activities like meeting new people, public speaking, or dining in public particularly distressing. Social anxiety disorder often emerges in late childhood, appearing as extreme shyness or avoidance of social interactions.
Panic Disorder
They can occur at any time, leaving individuals apprehensive. Many individuals with panic disorder live in constant fear of experiencing another attack and may make significant lifestyle changes to avoid triggering one.
Specific Phobias
Phobias, though often trivialised, are serious anxiety disorders characterised by irrational fear of specific stimuli. The mere thought or sight of the phobic trigger can induce extreme anxiety or panic. Common phobias include fear of flying (pteromerhanophobia), enclosed spaces (claustrophobia), and insects (entomophobia).
Interestingly, specific phobias, which are prevalent anxiety disorders, are more commonly experienced by females. However, not all phobias require professional intervention. For some, simply understanding and managing triggers can suffice. Yet, for those whose phobias significantly impact their quality of life, various therapeutic options exist.
Post-traumatic stress disorder
It’s normal to experience fear both during and after a distressing event. The body’s “fight-or-flight” reaction, which aids in preventing or addressing possible threats, includes the emotion of fear.
Who is susceptible to PTSD?
PTSD can strike anyone at any age. PTSD can affect anyone, regardless of age, including combat veterans, survivors of assault or abuse, witnesses of accidents or disasters, and those impacted by terror attacks. Individuals with PTSD may endure ongoing stress or fear, even when the danger has passed.
Separation Anxiety Disorder
While separation anxiety is commonly associated with children, adults can also grapple with this condition. Individuals diagnosed with separation anxiety disorder experience intense fear when away from their close connections. They harbor persistent concerns about potential harm befalling their loved ones during periods of separation. Consequently, they go to great lengths to avoid being alone or apart from their cherished ones. This fear often manifests in distressing dreams about separation or physical discomfort in anticipation of being apart.
Final Words
Anybody, regardless of gender, age, or cultural background, can suffer from anxiety problems. Identification of particular triggers and evaluation of the degree of impairment or discomfort resulting from these worries are necessary for diagnosis. Because cognitive-behavioural therapy is so effective in treating a wide range of conditions including those requiring severe mental illness or co-occurring medical issues, it is typically the treatment of choice for anxiety disorders.
