What is anxiety? And how can it be treated?

A few years ago, as usual, I drove back from work late at night. When I made a turn into the street where I live, I started to feel pressure in my chest. I did not understand what was happening to me and stopped the vehicle on the sidewalk, within a few moments I had difficulty breathing. Immediately I started to stress out, took shorter and faster breaths and had problems to swallowing my saliva. A good friend of mine took me to the emergency room, where they took many tests. After that I was told that I had no physical problem, that apparently it was just an anxiety attack. I could not understand what this meant, and why I would have an anxiety attack at all. I could not think of any reason why. I thought my life was fine and there was no reason for me to have such a strong emotional experience. After this incident, I decided to figure out why I had this experience. I went to see a professional who helped me understand the source of the anxiety, and how I can deal with it.

In this article I will briefly cover what an anxiety disorder is, what the symptoms are, what can cause anxiety and how it can be treated.

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is a natural emotional and physical response of the body to stressful situations, and it is expressed in fear or apprehension of what is about to come. Sometimes it is an imaginary apprehension, and sometimes it is a real apprehension. It can be related to an upcoming job interview, social meeting, school day, or any fear that something bad will happen in the future.

Anxiety usually includes negative or ineffective thoughts [demanding thoughts that lead to inaccurate conclusions and provoke a disproportionate emotional response] leading to the fear about the threat. It usually includes physiological symptoms such as a rapid pulse, sweating, and weakness as well as emotional symptoms such as anxiety, crying, feelings and helplessness.

If your feeling of anxiety is extreme, or it lasts for more than half a year and interfere with your life, you may have an anxiety disorder.

What is Anxiety Disorder?

Firstly, I’d like to state that it is normal to feel anxious, especially when moving to a new place, starting a new job or taking a test. This type of anxiety is unpleasant, but in fact it is a mechanism of our brain that actually makes us better understand the "element of danger". Remember that fear is an emotion, and the more emotion we have, the better we understand the world around us. We need to learn what is dangerous through fear, so we can survive. Normal anxiety is a feeling that comes and goes, but it does not really interfere with your daily life.

If you have an anxiety disorder, the feeling of fear is with you at all times. It feels intense and exhausting.

You have an anxiety disorder, when you stop doing things that you normally enjoy, or you enjoyed earlier in life. In extreme cases it can prevent you from getting in the elevator, crossing the street or even leaving the house. If this condition is untreated, anxiety will get worse over time.

Social anxiety

There are many types of anxiety disorder, such as generalized anxiety, separation phobia, agoraphobia, panic, OCD, PTSD [we will expand another time] and more, but from all of them social anxiety the one most people talk about. Social anxiety is an anxiety disorder that manifests itself in an extreme fear of criticism, rejection, or humiliation in all sorts of imaginary social situations. As mentioned earlier, the main symptom of anxiety is the avoidance of the anxiety-provoking element In cases of social anxiety it manifests itself in the avoidance of social situations, extreme shyness, or stage fright. It can also manifest in panic accompanied by physical symptoms (tremor, nausea, abdominal pain) before and during stressful social situations. In extreme cases it can make you just stay home and not go to work, school or even to the supermarket to buy bread.

Social anxiety is a relatively common phenomenon, and it can break out in your childhood, adolescence, or adulthood. When we try to understand what causes social anxiety, we usually talk about a combination of innate tendency to anxiety and personal circumstances. For example, a combination of an experience of rejection and social boycott or social humiliation + low self-esteem + perfectionism and a rigid style of thinking can lead to the development of social anxiety.

In numbers

Anxiety disorders are very common, just in the United States, it affects 40 million people every year. This is the most common group of mental coping in the United States. It is sad that only 36.9 percent of people with anxiety disorder receive treatment. Anxiety disorders can affect anyone at any age. Interestingly, according to the American Psychiatric Association, women are more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety disorder.

Anxiety disorders may exist in varying degrees of severity. Some people experience relatively mild and rare symptoms of anxiety in extreme stress and crisis situations. While others face anxiety disorders accompanied by distress that significantly impairs their ability to function in occupational situations (e.g., stage fright), social and interpersonal.

Treatment

There are several treatment methods for dealing with anxiety which aim to deal with the various sources and causes of anxiety disorders. As we have seen, anxiety has several parts, the cognitive part [the negative thought or ineffective thought], the physical / emotional part [the emotional or physical response to the thought of anxiety], the behavioral part [our avoidance of the cause of anxiety]. Anxiety treatment will try to deal with each of these parts individually and together.

The Cognitive Part: Therapy will deal with our thought responses, awareness of it and how it creates our reality. Understanding the automatic patterns of our distorted thinking, and new cognitive construction by different techniques.

The physical / emotional part: The treatment will deal with regaining control over the body's reactions, the ability to breathe deeply, to restore balance and a controlled response of the body under our control. Using the practice of mindfulness is very common in dealing with this. In the emotional part we will focus on the emotional sources that arise in us, the initial experiences that were a source of anxiety, their processing, and capacity for inclusion and reactive change.

The behavioral part: The therapy is primarily about our ability to manage your life according to your directed perceptions and beliefs. It will direct our actions in the right way, in situations of prevention of things that are important to us. Anxiety disorder treatment will focus on controlled exposure to anxiety and healthier. Instead of running away, stay focused and win.

No matter what type of anxiety you are dealing with, treatment can help you.

Contact me today for help. You can make an appointment with me at the online clinic. We will not leave you alone.