Understanding Anxiety Disorders: When Worry Is Overwhelming

Understanding anxiety disorders begins with recognizing that everyone feels anxiety from time to time. It’s a perfectly normal emotional response to an upcoming meeting, performance, or life change. Anxiety disorders, which are the world’s most common mental health conditions, go beyond normal anxious feelings and into excessiveness. 

For millions of people with anxiety disorders, the persistent anxiousness significantly affects relationships, work, physical health, and their overall function. 

Long-term risk factors can play a role in disrupting one’s daily life with anxiety and fear. That being said, the many types of anxiety disorders are highly treatable psychiatric disorders. With the right help from bonmente, you can better manage your anxiety.

Understanding Anxiety Disorders: What You Need to Know

Anxiety disorders are common mental health conditions in the United States, affecting over 40 million adults each year. 

Anxiety disorders involve excessive ongoing worry or fear that can feel difficult to control and is often out of proportion to the actual situation.

The term anxiety disorder covers a range of conditions, including:

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD): This involves fear and feeling overwhelmed about everyday things. 
• Panic Disorder: This condition leads to panic attacks: sudden intense fear, discomfort, or feeling a loss of control. In some cases, this can feel like a heart attack with sensations like chest pain, dizziness, shortness of breath, sweating, chills, and other physical symptoms alongside the emotional panic. These can be as frequent as daily, or infrequent as a few times a year; the difference between an isolated panic attack with an identifiable trigger and a panic disorder is that the latter involves recurrent unexpected panic attacks and inhibiting oneself to try to avoid panic attacks. 
• Social Anxiety Disorder: Here, fear or anxiety symptoms occur in situations where others may judge the person. These can be everyday situations such as using a public restroom, or occasional ones like job interviews. This can lead to avoidance behaviors and worrying about interactions weeks before the interaction takes place. 
• Phobias: Overwhelming fears of specific things or events. Though there are terms like arachnophobia and claustrophobia that are familiar to many, in the context of healthcare the term “specific phobia” is the official diagnosis that is given by a mental health professional. 
• Separation Anxiety Disorder: A common childhood anxiety disorder, this involves a heightened version of a normal anxiety felt when separated, or anticipating separation, from an attachment figure.
• Agoraphobia: Fear of being in settings or situations that could be hard to escape from, such as public transportation or crowded supermarkets. This could present as avoidance of such situations, and in severe cases could involve an unwillingness to even leave one’s house. 

What Causes Anxiety Disorders?

• Genetics: GAD has a heritability of approx. 30%. So, it can indeed run in families, and anxiety disorders in children could be a sign of inheritance.
• Brain Chemistry: Here, the brain’s defense systems will trigger heightened feelings of perceived threat in situations that are neutral. 
• Life Experiences: Traumatic events can potentially trigger anxiety disorders. 
• Health Issues: Medical conditions like thyroid problems or respiratory disorders have been linked to anxiety.

Getting a psychiatric evaluation for an anxiety disorder can identify root causes and build a custom treatment plan that works.

Common Signs and Symptoms of Anxiety Disorder

• Excessive worry or fear
• Restlessness and feeling “on edge”
• Difficulty concentrating
• Sleep issues, such as trouble falling asleep
• Physical symptoms like excessive sweating, trembling, or shortness of breath
• Avoidance of potential triggers, which could be a person, place, thing, or situation

Effective Treatments for Anxiety Disorder

Though the symptoms may be unpleasant, the good news is that anxiety disorders are highly treatable. 

We here at bonmente have experience with treating anxiety disorders. We know that with the right treatment plan, which may involve talk therapy and medication along with lifestyle changes, patients can gain control over their condition. 

Psychotherapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) identifies and challenges irrational thoughts and patterns to develop better coping strategies.

Exposure therapy is a form of CBT that can be particularly helpful for treating anxiety. It gradually helps patients face and reduce their fears in a safe setting for encountering the triggering stimuli.

Medication Management

Many anxiety medications are available, most of which fall under two main classes.

These are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and benzodiazepines (the second-line option).

At bonmente, our medication management involves continual monitoring of the effectiveness of medications and promoting safe usage.

Lifestyle Changes

Regular exercise can lower stress and feel genuinely empowering. A healthy diet has also been shown to positively affect anxiety.

Practicing good sleep hygiene has an overall positive effect on mental and physical health. Stress-management techniques like meditation and breathing exercises can be calming.

Social Support

Sharing one’s fears and worries with trusted friends, family, or even a support group can be relieving, especially when the reaction is better than expected.

People whose anxiety disorders are comorbid with substance-use disorders could see a positive change in anxiety issues if sobriety is achieved.

Need a psychiatric evaluation, or treatment for understanding anxiety disorders? Reach out to bonmente to get started! We accept most insurances and have appointments readily available.