Everybody experiences fear and anxiety. Fear is an emotional, physiologic and behavioral response to a recognized external or internal threat – for example an intruder into your home. Anxiety is a normal emotion. It is your brains way of reacting to stress and alerting you of potential danger ahead.
According to WebMD – everyone feels anxious now and then. For example – you worry when faced with a problem at work, before taking a test, before making an important decision or when you have no money.
What are the major anxiety disorders we should know?
General anxiety disorders – you feel excessive, unrealistic worry and tension with little or no reason.
Panic disorder – you feel sudden, intense fear, that brinks on panic attacks. During a panic attack, you may break out in a sweat, develop chest pain, and have pounding heart beat plus palpitations. Sometimes you may feel like you are choking or having a heart attack.
Social anxiety disorder – also called social phobia, this is when you feel overwhelming worry and self consciousness, about every day social situations. You obviously worry about others judging you or being embarrassed or ridiculed.
Specific phobias – you feel intense fear of a specific object or situation, such as heights, or flying. The fear goes beyond what is appropriate and may cause you to avoid ordinary situations.
Guilty pangs anxiety disorders – this happens when you have done something secretly, which you feel nobody should know, or only one or two people know about it and you are afraid they might expose you. Like incest, stealing, fornication, adultery etc. Whenever you remember the possibility of exposure you go into panic attacks and wish the ground could open and swallow you.
Agoraphobia – you have intense fear of being in a place where it seems hard to escape or get help if an emergency occurs. For example, you may panic or feel anxious when in an airplane, public transportation, standing in line with a crowd, or when in a tube to do MRI or CT-Scan.
Separation anxiety – little kids are not the only ones who feel scared or anxious when a loved one leaves. Anyone can get separation anxiety disorders. If you do, you will feel very anxious or fearful when a person you are close to leaves your sight. You will always worry that something bad may happen to you or your loved ones. Or worry that the person leaving has rejected or no longer loves you.
Selective mutism – this is a type of social anxiety in which young kids who talk normally with their family suddenly refuse to speak in public, like a school.
Medication – induced anxiety disorder – use of certain medications or illegal drugs, or withdrawal from certain drugs can trigger off, some symptoms of anxiety disorder.
Symptoms of anxiety disorders include:
Panic, fear, uneasiness.
Feeling of panic, doom or danger.
Sleep problems.
Not being able to stay calm and still.
Cold, sweaty, numb or tingling hands or feet.
Shortness of breath.
Breathing faster and more quickly than normal – hyperventilation.
Heart palpitation.
Dry mouth.
Nausea.
Tense muscles.
Dizziness.
Thinking about a problem, or an infraction or a misbehavior over and over again, but unable to stop it – ruminations.
Inability to concentrate.
Intensely or obsessively or morbidly avoiding feared objects or places.
Treatment of anxiety disorders.
Several types of drugs are used to treat anxiety disorders. So please consult your doctor for appropriate directions. Always be medically guided.
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