Stress, worry, tension, and anxiety are all parts of everyone’s life. But merely experiencing any of these at a normal doesn’t suggest anything out of ordinary. Anxiety problems only turn into something sinister once these cause the development of disorders that inhibit one’s ability to function normally.
There are many forms of anxiety disorders – the majority of them can often become severe enough as to affect every aspect of one’s life. In total, there are at least six major anxiety problems, all of which have distinct symptoms and severity.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder or GAD
Everyone worries to some degree, but the degree at which people with generalized Anxiety Disorder worry are everything but normal. Their worries are out of proportion, excessively irrational, and life-inhibiting, to say the least.
Psychological sensations like worrying are often accompanied physiological symptoms like sweating, trembling, hot flashes, and tension. Patients of GAD also experience the following symptoms when they are on the verge of having another attack of anxiety or when they are experiencing an episode: out of breathe, light headed, nauseated, frequent urination, irritability, inability to stay focused, fatigued, and having sleep disturbances.
Panic Disorder and Panic Attacks
Panic attacks are the main symptoms of an anxiety disorder called panic disorder and within this symptom alone are dozens of different psychological and physical symptoms, as well as emotional sensations. Not all of these symptoms occur in one patient though. Usually, only four is necessary to qualify the condition as panic attack.
Patients of panic disorder or panic attack commonly report of the following symptoms: chest discomfort, racing or poundingheart, shaking or trembling, shortness of breath, nausea, tingling sensations, weakness or fatigue, depersonalization, derealization, and fear losing control, and of going crazy.
Social Phobia or Social Anxiety
Social phobia, otherwise called as social anxiety, is a form of anxiety disorder that makes people suffering from it specifically fearful of social situations wherein there are possibilities of being scrutinized by others. The patients’ fears are mostly rooted on the fear of being judged in such situations or their sense of incapability to measure up to other people’s judgment or expectations.
Specific Phobias
Phobias are intense, irrational fears of certain situations or things – being in a public gathering, in closed-in spaces, highway driving, tunnels, blood, flying, water, dogs, insects, and others. People with phobia, especially adults, acknowledge that their fears are irrational and there is no real reason to fear that which makes them feel dreadful. Nonetheless, their fears are often so overwhelming that when faced with their objects of fear, they forget all reason. Instead of these fears being handled with reason, these are often permitted by lack of action to control them into more severe forms of anxiety and predisposed panic attack.
People with phobia usually end up responding in one of two ways – first, avoid the object of fear or situation, and second, deal with them by enduring with extreme distress and anxiety. Neither approach is unhealthy for the person.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
OCD is a puzzling anxiety disorder that is characterized by obsessive thoughts or recurrent thoughts called obsessions and repetitive, ritualized behaviors or compulsions that a person is forced to perform. The majority of cases of OCD are marked by the occurrence of both components. However, in less than 20% of all patients, OCD develops into a condition that involves only obsessions OR compulsions.
Ritualized behaviors or compulsions are often performed to ease anxiety, although in not a few cases, performing ritualized behaviors only worsen the anxiety.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Post-Traumatic Disorder or PTSD is a form of anxiety problems that develops from experiencing or witnessing an intensely traumatic, tragic or terrifying event. Usually, such experiences leave people with PTSD emotionally numb particularly to people they were once close to and bothered with memories of the event unless treated.
Anxiety problems are many and varying, but all have symptoms that often inhibit people suffering from them from living normal lives. To find out more about the individual disorders and the treatments available for them, visit my website.
