Everyone feels anxious now and then, it’s a normal emotion.Anxiety disorders are different, though. They are a group of mental illnesses, and the distress they cause can keep you from carrying on with your life normally. Anxiety disorder includes
- Generalized Anxiety Disorder- Generalized anxiety disorder symptoms include:
- Restlessness or feeling wound-up or on edge
- Being easily fatigued
- Difficulty concentrating or having their minds go blank
- Irritability
- Muscle tension
- Difficulty controlling the worry
- Panic disorder- Sudden periods of intense fear that may include palpitations, pounding heart, or accelerated heart rate; sweating; trembling or shaking; sensations of shortness of breath, smothering, or choking; and feeling of impending doom.
Panic disorder symptoms include:
- Sudden and repeated attacks of intense fear
- Feelings of being out of control during a panic attack
- Intense worries about when the next attack will happen
- Fear or avoidance of places where panic attacks have occurred in the past
- Phobias- persistent fear of an object or situation.Phobias can be divided into
- Specific phobias- fear and anxiety are triggered by a specific stimulus or situation.
Common phobias are fire, flying, blood, water, highway driving, and tunnels. When people are exposed to their phobia, they may experience trembling, shortness of breath, or rapid heartbeat.
- Agoraphobia-Agoraphobia is when fear of a situation occurs because it is felt that escape would not be possible. It may also be caused by various specific phobias such as fear of open spaces, social embarrassment (social agoraphobia), fear of contamination (fear of germs, possibly complicated by obsessive-compulsive disorder) or PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) related to a trauma that occurred out of doors.
- Social phobia – social phobias include fear of public situations and scrutiny, which leads to embarrassment or humiliation.
Phobia can be treated with combination of counselling and medication; other methods include Cognitive behavioural therapy( CBT), systematic desensitization, progressive relaxation, virtual reality, modelling, medication and hypnotherapy.
- Social anxiety disorder – Feeling highly anxious about being with other people and having a hard time talking to them
- Feeling very self-conscious in front of other people and worried about feeling humiliated, embarrassed, or rejected, or fearful of offending others
- Being very afraid that other people will judge them
- Worrying for days or weeks before an event where other people will be
- Staying away from places where there are other people
Others are separation anxiety disorder and selective mutism. Without treatment, anxiety disorders tend to remain; Treatment may include lifestyle changes, counselling, and medications.