Anxiety, we have all heard someone say that word at a young age. To some, it just means fear or anxiousness. To others, it is their world and it causes them to live a whole different lifestyle. It is normal to get anxiety randomly from being put in certain situations. It becomes a problem when it affects your day to day living. Some anxiety is necessary for dangerous situations to help us get out of there. But not at all times, it’s debilitating when it’s happening all the time. Just like my OCD series, this will be my Three-part guide on anxiety. Here you can find what anxiety is, what to do about it, my personal experience and my bonus already written post: how to help loved ones.
According to the dictionary on google: Anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness or unease typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. Anxiety basically makes you feel like you are in danger when that very well may not be the case. In cavemen times anxiety was beneficial for us for survival whether it was that a lion was near or a tree fell and we needed a quick decision what to do. We don’t really have to deal with things like that in modern times but there are still situations that anxiety and that fight or flight is beneficial. It is not beneficial however when it’s constant and when we aren’t actually in danger.
Anxiety affects 44 million Americans and only 1/3 receive treatment. There are 6 anxiety disorders: Generalized Anxiety, Post Traumatic Stress (PTSD), Social Anxiety, Panic Disorder, Phobias and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I already talked about OCD which you can find in the link above.
On WebMD Generalized Anxiety disorder (GAD) is characterized by excessive exaggerated anxiety and worry about everyday life events with no obvious reason for worry. Usually, the thoughts are unrealistic and don’t make sense to the situation. If you have this disorder you can’t stop worrying about health, family, money, work, or school. Because of the constant worry, You feel like everything will lead to catastrophe and have catastrophic thoughts. This thinking dominates your life which then creates problems in your everyday living. It is not uncommon to have other mental disorders along with GAD like depression and other anxiety related issues.
PTSD is known to affect mainly soldiers coming from the army and although their bravery comes with consequences, they are not the only ones affected. According to NIMH.gov PTSD is a disorder that develops in some people who experienced a shocking, scary, or dangerous event. So that means things like car accidents, rapes, and near-death experiences can result in PTSD. Lots of people experience some fear after something traumatic and that’s called acute PTSD. Acute PTSD usually gets resolved and it goes away. For chronic sufferers, it doesn’t go away and that is when it is classified as a disorder. There are even times when it can happen from traumatic things like a loved one dying.
People that experience PTSD has to experience symptoms for at least a month. You have to have symptoms for at least a month and they have to be severe enough that it interferes with life and relationships. You have to have at least one re-experiencing symptom, one avoidance symptom, two arousal and reactivity symptoms and at last two cognition and mood symptoms. It can start 3 months after the event or even a year after the event. They are usually put into four categories:
1. Re-experiencing symptoms- can start from own persons feelings or thoughts. Words, objects or situations are reminders that can trigger these symptoms.
2. Avoidance symptoms- these symptoms happen when a sufferer is trying to avoid something that reminds them of the traumatic event. It may cause you to change your personal routine. For example, someone that was sexually assaulted in an alley may avoid alleys.
3. Arousal and reactivity symptoms- this is usually constant. It can make you feel stressed and angry. Like all the other symptoms it can make daily living hard.
4. Negative thoughts and feelings- These thoughts make it hard to have relationships with family and friends. They usually happen right after the traumatic event and can worsen.
Social anxiety is pretty self-explanatory. It means social settings make you anxious! Socialanxiety.org says Social Anxiety is the fear of being judged and negatively evaluated by other people leading to feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, self-consciousness, embarrassment, humiliation, and depression. Some people have social anxiety when it comes to talking in group settings and others have social anxiety whenever they are in social settings. In my opinion, I feel social media has caused more social anxiety in today’s world because we are on our phones more and communicating with each other directly, less. we are loosing those in-person social skills which is causing more social anxiety. It also happens after a bad social experience(s) like bullying.
People with Social Anxiety get the usual anxiety symptoms I described in generalized anxiety but mainly during social settings. If you have social anxiety you may notice yourself avoiding any time social gathering is involved or you will notice you get anxious when:
Panic disorder is a little different from the other disorders. It causes a feeling of terror for no reason. According to ADAA Panic Disorder is diagnosed in people who experience spontaneous seemingly out of the blue panic attacks and are very preoccupied with the fear of re-occurring attacks. Panic attacks happen anywhere at any time for no specific reason and you may become afraid of it happening again. You also may start to notice yourself avoiding places where you had the attack. In my opinion, I think Panic Attacks are our subconscious bringing anxiety to our conscious that we may suppress. It happens to more women than men and usually begins in early adulthood. Because you fear panic randomly, it affects daily life a lot.
A Panic Attack happens within minutes and it usually has one of these four symptoms:
Because these symptoms can be so intense and feel so out of the blue, you may go to the emergency room a lot.
Everyone has fear of different things. But when it comes to phobias it’s a little more extreme. According to Google, a phobia is an extreme irrational fear or aversion to something. When faced with that phobia you may have a deep sense of dread or panic. Unlike generalized anxiety where it’s all the time, Phobias happen when faced with that thing, situation or place. Phobias are caused by seeing a family member be scared, having a traumatic event with that thing or even genetic factors. People with phobias often know their fear is irrational but can’t help it. Here is a list of different phobias.
One of the most common and debilitating phobias is called Agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is a fear of situations or places that may cause panic, embarrassment or helplessness. It usually is developed after one or more panic attacks happen in public and you often become terrified of leaving home. Panic Disorder also can cause Agoraphobia.
If you have a phobia you may notice yourself doing things to avoid that phobia. Depending on the severity, your daily life could revolve around avoiding the phobia or having anxiety about it. When dealing with the phobia, your symptoms will be similar to having a panic attack. Medical News Today says that phobias can make you experience:
On Medical News Today they say that anxiety can be caused by environmental factors like relationships, stress, job, school, finances, traumatic event or even low oxygen from a high altitude. I personally think anxiety also develops from childhood based on different events, if your parents were the cause of your anxiety and how your parents helped you through those events. Another factor is genetics, if it runs in your family then there’s also potential you could get anxiety. Brain chemistry is another one, your chemicals could be all imbalanced. And the last is medical factors like withdrawing from meds or drugs or side effect of a serious condition.
Anxiety can really suck and its especially hard struggling with it every day. The more we become educated about it the more we can conquer it. Everyone has different severities of the anxiety they deal with and if any of this sounds familiar or sounds like you go out and seek help. You are not alone, you don’t have to be embarrassed. Therapy is here to help you so you don’t have to suffer in silence. In the next part of my series, we’ll talk about my personal experience with anxiety.
Have more you want to add? Feel like I left things out? Leave it in the comments below and let the fellow readers know!
