The Experience of Anxiety Disorder - Essay Example

Running head: ANXIETY Anxiety. Overview ANXIETY Anxiety. Overview Occasionally every person feels some anxiety. Anxiety in stressful situations is a normal reaction. There are cases, when anxiety takes extreme form and leads to the fear of everyday situations. This type of anxiety of all-over is called generalized anxiety disorder. Anxiety frequently comes to person with depression, it does not choose, whom to strike – a man or a woman. There are such people, who have a genetic predisposition for this disorder, but it does not mean its development would be inevitable. “A big myth about anxiety is that it’s negative and something we can — and need to — eliminate”, was an opinion of a psychologist at the University of Louisville (Tartakovsky). The experience of disorder can differ from person to person. Ongoing worry and stress in everyday life are the central anxiety features. Symptoms of anxiety can include sweating, confusion, breathing difficulty, avoidance behavior, rapid heartbeat and so on. “In the case of panic, interpreting normal bodily sensations as ‘dangerous’ communicates danger to your body, which ultimately prepares you for the danger” (Tartakovsky). Anxiety symptoms can be divided into five categories. A variety of anxiety disorders can be associated with different anxiety symptoms. Physical symptoms of anxiety Most anxiety symptoms usually are part of person`s fight and freeze response. A physical response is happening due to the nervous system`s arousal, which leads to physical symptoms, for example, racing heartbeat. During running and fighting we cause an increase of heart rate. Muscles get an increased blood flow. It flows away from the extremities to reduce the chance of bleeding out in the case you would be hurt, for example, you lose a finger. People, suffering from health ANXIETY and social anxiety, panic disorder, are concerned in monitoring of their physical sensations. Dread of blushing is also a type of social anxiety. Surprising, but blushing is frequently associated with positive estimations. Its thought it helps with social cohesion. People, who worry, often can have problems with tension in shoulders and jaw and muscle aches. They often believe they have signs of illness, when they feel physical symptoms of anxiety.Конец форм Cognitive symptoms Social anxiety often makes people worry that their condition is obvious to associates and they would be judged as stupid or boring. They worry they can lose control due to anxiety. Generalized Anxiety Disorder makes people to worry that worrying they often feel will harm them. They also believe it is necessary for not making mistakes, paradoxically. A cognitive response refers to disorders about the situation and ability of a person to deal with it. People often lose confidence in themselves, suffering from anxiety. They overestimate the opportunity of negative things happening, they do not believe in their ability to cope with something not positive. People tend to get into “all-or-nothing” condition, when they are getting anxious. Behavioral symptoms of anxiety The main symptom of anxiety is avoidance. People try to avoid stressful situations, where they have a fear of anxiety or they will not have a way to escape. People are trying to avoid situations, where their fear tells them they will not be able to act perfectly according their desire. To work extra hard can be one way of the people`s try to overcompensating of anxiety. Both over- and under-checking are frequently seen in a variety of anxiety types. For example, people, who are worrying ANXIETY about their weight, sometimes weigh themselves very often or, on the contrary, avoid this procedure. A behavioral response may include aggression or irrational behavior. Affective (emotional) symptoms of anxiety Other emotions are felt by anxious people too. For example, they can be in affect of hopelessness or irritability. Interpersonal symptoms of anxiety Anxiety has a variety of interpersonal symptoms. People who are suffering from panic disorder, eating disorders, health, social and generalized anxiety may seek a lot for reassurance, especially in romantic relationships. People, suffering from anxiety, often worry about being dependent in the relationships or incompetent. They can avoid sexual relationships because of increased heart rate or body temperature and other physical sensations, which look like the anxiety symptoms. They can be snap due to irritability caused by anxiety at the family. Causes of anxiety There cannot be defined the one cause of anxiety. In fact, there exist a lot of factors that may lead to the development of thoughts and behavior with anxious emphasis. Among such causes we can name hereditary, biochemical factors and life style. Hereditary factors were proved with researches which have shown that people who have relatives, who suffered from anxiety, more likely have a chance to experience it. High anxiety, according to research results, can be caused by incorrect balance of brain chemicals, that regulate people`s physical reactions and feelings. This imbalance of biochemical level in some cases can be corrected with medicaments. ANXIETY People are often made to suffer from anxiety due to certain experiences in their life. This disorder can be caused with family break-up, workplace conflict, abuse, problems at school. These stresses make people vulnerable to anxiety of experience, they check on the person`s strength. Personality type can also influence on the fact of getting into the risk group of high anxiety. People, whose self-esteem is low, who tend to be shy and do not have an excellent capacity to cope with problems, have a chance to experience high anxiety. Certain thinking style can lead you to a group of risk more likely than others. For example, people, who have a habit and manners of a perfectionist or are expected to be constant controlled in the emotional field, will feel stress and suffer from worrying more likely than others. High anxiety can be also caused due to certain style of behaving. For example, this risk group may include people who have few capabilities to study the ways of solving stressful situations and managing fears and problems. Managing anxiety There are several methods of how to manage anxiety. The first step is to identify the stressful situations and events which make person to cope with troubles. The most popular way to fill this instruction is to keep a symptom diary and the situation when the anxiety directly occurs. In this way it is possible to define “dangerous” thoughts and take the following steps of conquering the specific problems, which were found. Sometimes it is difficult to realize, but person`s organism has a great ability of solving stressful situations. After the identification of causes of the high anxiety, the solution of the problem becomes a technical question. The structure of solving anxiety problems has the following form: ANXIETY Problem`s identification. After you wrote down the necessary aspects, including special full description of what is happening, why, with whom, how and the way of “rescue”, you should define what would you like to change. Write down so many variants of solving the problem as possible and consider the approximate opportunity these possible actions will help in overcoming of the situation. Select the most suitable option. Create and develop a plan, which would be useful in your try to make the chosen option true. If you realize this chose is not a solution of the problem, don`t forget you have another variants to try. At this moment you return to the written list and chose another option, which seems useful. Another method of fighting with anxiety is to make breathing exercises. People, who are feeling anxiety, breathe more rapidly. This can lead to such unpleasant sensations as light-headedness or confusion. For this reason the special breathing technique was invented to make breathing slower in a mechanical way and relieve from several other symptoms, which can help person to return clarity of thought. The breathing should begin by timing and made according the following instruction. The person should breathe in through the nose, counting for three seconds. Then the one might breathe out through the nose, and count to three once more. This procedure should be repeating during two to three minutes. After you check the result you will see the breathing technique is useful to slow down breathing when the person is getting into a worrying situation. It can be done anywhere and no one else can notice you exercising. Psychological treatment is found very effective source for the anxiety treatment. Cognitive therapy consists of two components. The first component is ANXIETY based on the idea that the difficult feelings are the results of a persons thoughts about situation. The aim of this therapy is to help in identification of automatic and irrational feelings and beliefs to turn them into a positive way of thinking. The second part of cognitive therapy lies in the assistance with changing behavior, which is followed by anxiety symptoms. There are medication treatments and those, which include increasing physical exercising and changes in diets. The person has opportunity to influence the changes in his lifestyle. The first one can do it to make a plan of what pleasant activity he will take part next day. It does not mean you should create huge or expensive plans for the future, but it might be enjoyable and help you to distract from everyday worries. The next advice is to reduce intake of caffeine. Caffeine is a stimulating us to keep feeling awake. It is producing the common physiological response that we feel, when we get into stressful situations. Large dose of coffee will keep us bouncy, but it makes person more vulnerable to struggle from anxiety. The same concerns the alcohol drinks too. Some people use it to achieve an antithetic result – they are trying to deal with anxiety, depression and stress in such way. However, too much alcohol throws us into the risk group of anxiety sufferers. Much of the anxiety stress may be caused by the poor management of time. It is very good to be flexible, but sometimes plans and schedules must become an essential part of our life. The advice is to plan many activities during the day and also include some leisure time into it. So, anxiety disorders could be treated, whether you ask for professional help or follow simple steps yourself. ANXIETY References Tartakovsky, M. (2014, Dec 9). The Truth About Anxiety.  Retrieved from psychcentral.com Read More