What Does Anxiety Do To You

What Else Should I Ask My Healthcare Provider

If you have an anxiety disorder, ask your provider:

• Whats the best treatment for me?
• Do I need medication? What type?
• How long should I take medication?
• What type of psychotherapy will work best?
• What else can I do to manage my symptoms?
• What other conditions am I at risk for?

A note from Cleveland Clinic

An anxiety disorder can make it difficult to get through your day. Anxiety disorder symptoms include feelings of nervousness, panic and fear. You may also have physical symptoms such as sweating and a rapid heartbeat. But you dont need to live like this. Several effective anxiety disorder treatments are available. Talk to your healthcare provider to figure out your diagnosis and the best treatment plan. Often, treatment combines medications and therapy. Anti-anxiety medications and antidepressants, together with CBT, can help you feel your best.

What Might Indicate That Both Anxiety And Depression Are Present

Traits that may signal the presence of both anxiety disorder and depression include:

• Irrational worries or fears that wont go away
• Physical symptoms, such as fatigue, headaches, rapid heartbeat, labored breathing or abdominal pain
• Difficulty going to sleep or staying asleep
• Changes in eating habits either too much or too little
• Trouble remembering, making decisions or concentrating
• Constant feelings of sadness or worthlessness
• Loss of usual interest in activities or hobbies
• Feeling often tired and cranky
• Inability to relax and live in the moment
• Suffering from panic attacks, including the sense of losing inner control2

Managing Symptoms: Staying Healthy

Being healthy is important for all children and can be especially important for children with depression or anxiety. In addition to getting the right treatment, leading a healthy lifestyle can play a role in managing symptoms of depression or anxiety. Here are some healthy behaviors that may help:

• Having a healthy eating plan centered on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes , lean protein sources, and nuts and seeds
• Participating in physical activity for at least 60 minutes each day
• Practicing mindfulness or relaxation techniques

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What Causes Anxiety Disorders

We dont fully understand what causes anxiety disorders. But it is thought that the following factors can cause anxiety.

Genetics. Some people seem to be born more anxious than others. You may get anxiety through your genes.

Life experience. This could be bad experiences such as being abused or losing a loved one. It could also include big changes in life such as moving home, pregnancy or losing your job.

Drugs. Caffeine in coffee and alcohol can make you feel anxious. Illegal drugs, also known as street drugs, can also have an effect.

Circumstances. Sometimes you know what is causing your anxiety. When the problem goes, so does your anxiety.

Communicating And Making The Paradigm Shift: What Follows

David Schechter, MD 30 minutes

Learn why the patients paradigm and narrative are crucial. Also, techniques in the art of listening to and changing the patients perspective on their condition. This is perhaps the most crucial step in the whole process.

Objectives:

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Whats The Outlook For People With Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety disorders can often go undiagnosed and untreated. Fortunately, treatment can help. The right treatment can help improve your quality of life, relationships and productivity. It can also support your overall well-being.

You dont need to live with constant worry and fear. If you notice symptoms of an anxiety disorder, talk to your healthcare provider. Its best to get diagnosed and treated as soon as possible. Doing so can limit the problems that anxiety disorders can cause. Often, a combination of medications and counseling for anxiety can help you feel your best.

Lies Anxiety Constantly Tells You

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Causes And Risk Factors Of Anxiety Disorders

Researchers think that various factors may contribute to anxiety. The more risk factors an individual has, the greater the likelihood that theyll develop an anxiety disorder, notes Dr. Chand.

Emotion

An author of the study, Koraly Perez-Edgar, PhD, a professor of psychology at the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, says that this focus on threat may be one way that anxiety begins to take hold.

Individuals who attend to aspects of the environment that they consider threatening can potentially create a cycle that strengthens biases toward threat, as well as toward the view that the environment is threatening, which can then lead to social withdrawal and anxiety, she says.

People can learn to be anxious in various situations, says Jonathan Abramowitz, PhD, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and the founding editor of the Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders.

This can occur through experiences in which anxiety or fear becomes associated with a specific stimulus or a stressful or traumatic event, by learning about something fearful, and through vicarious conditioning, he says.

Vicarious conditioning, says Dr. Abramowitz, occurs when you watch someone else experience a stressful and traumatic event like food poisoning or being bitten by a dog and come to see certain situations as dangerous.

How To Calm Yourself Down Before Receiving A Vaccine

In the short term, there are several steps you can take to help yourself relax before getting vaccinated.

One of the most effective ways to cope with vaccine anxiety is to take slow, deep breaths when feeling overwhelmed or anxious. This helps slow your heart rate and gives your body a chance to relax.

Visualizing positive outcomes can also help you calm down before receiving a vaccine. Close your eyes and imagine yourself feeling calm, safe, and secure this can help reduce stress levels.

Regularly keeping up with relaxation practices can also be beneficial in managing vaccine anxiety, as it will help you to stay relaxed during immunization appointments. Practices like yoga and meditation work to give you an overall sense of well-being and better control over your emotions.

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What Are The Types Of Anxiety Disorders

There are several types of anxiety disorders, including:

• Generalized anxiety disorder .People with GAD worry about ordinary issues such as health, money, work, and family. But their worries are excessive, and they have them almost every day for at least 6 months.
• Panic disorder. People with panic disorder have panic attacks. These are sudden, repeated periods of intense fear when there is no danger. The attacks come on quickly and can last several minutes or more.
• Phobias. People with phobias have an intense fear of something that poses little or no actual danger. Their fear may be about spiders, flying, going to crowded places, or being in social situations .

When To Seek Professional Help

While self-help coping strategies can be very effective, if your worries, fears, or anxiety attacks have become so great that theyre causing extreme distress or disrupting your daily routine, its important to seek professional help.

If youre experiencing a lot of physical symptoms, you should start by getting a medical checkup. Your doctor can check to make sure that your anxiety isnt caused by a medical condition, such as a thyroid problem, hypoglycemia, or asthma. Since certain drugs and supplements can cause anxiety, your doctor will also want to know about any prescriptions, over-the-counter medications, herbal remedies, and recreational drugs youre taking.

If your physician rules out a medical cause, the next step is to consult with a therapist who has experience treating anxiety disorders. The therapist will work with you to determine the cause and type of your disorder and devise a course of treatment.

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Finding The Right Resources To Answer Your Questions And Meet Your Complex Needs

Just as anxiety and depression tend to be worse when occurring together, treatment of these disorders is most effective when both conditions are addressed at the same time.1

Hartgrove Behavioral Health System provides integrated care that treats these and other mental health issues simultaneously. As part of our comprehensive care, medical specialists and therapists work together to help bring healing and balance in our patients lives a feeling of being in charge of their inner self again.

Breathing And Respiratory Changes

During periods of anxiety, a persons breathing may become rapid and shallow, which is called hyperventilation.

Hyperventilation allows the lungs to take in more oxygen and quickly transport it around the body. Extra oxygen helps the body prepare to fight or flee.

Hyperventilation can make people feel like they are not getting enough oxygen, and they may gasp for breath. This can worsen hyperventilation and its symptoms, which include:

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Treatment And Medication Options For Anxiety

Anxiety disorders are treated through medication and therapy. You might feel embarrassed talking about the things you are feeling and thinking, but talking about it, say experts, is the best treatment.

A particular form of therapy is considered most effective: cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT for short, which offers patients strategies to help change the negative thought patterns that have reinforced their anxiety.

Antidepressants the types of medication most frequently used to treat depression are the drugs that also work best for anxiety disorders. Anti-anxiety medications are also used.

Find What Relaxes You

There are already things in your life that relax you. You may find it beneficial to make a list of things you enjoy and that help you to relax so you can reference it when symptoms of anxiety arise. When you notice your anxiety rising turn to those activities to help stop symptoms before they escalate.

For example, if you find that a warm bath is relaxing, don’t wait, draw a bath, maybe light some candles or add a few nice scents and get in. Whether it’s a bath, a shower, skipping stones at a park, getting a massage – if it works, do it right away, rather than allowing yourself to become overwhelmed by your anxiety.

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How Gad Is Treated

GAD can have a significant effect on your daily life, but several different treatments are available that can help ease your symptoms. These include:

• psychological therapy such as cognitive behavioural therapy
• medication such as a type of antidepressant called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors

There are also many things you can do yourself to help reduce your anxiety, such as going on a self-help course, exercising regularly, stopping smoking and cutting down on the amount of alcohol and caffeine you drink.

With treatment, many people are able to control their levels of anxiety. However, some treatments may need to be continued for a long time and there may be periods where your symptoms worsen.

If these initial treatments do not help, you will usually be offered either a more intensive psychological treatment or medication. These are described below.

How Does Anxiety Affect The Body

You know what stress feels like: Sweaty palms and the feeling of butterflies in your stomach are two of the most recognizable hallmarks of feeling stressed.

But, what exactly does anxiety feel like?

In the short term, you may be tempted to brush these signs and symptoms off. But, over time, you may begin to notice that the symptoms of anxiety affect your overall quality of life.

For instance, headaches and difficulty concentrating may make you less productive at work, muscle tension may lead to pain that keeps you from being active or getting a good night’s rest, and nausea may affect your appetite and ultimately lead to fatigue.

“In addition, when anxiety is allowed to persist for some time, there can be long-term health implications,” warns Dr. Sawal. “Generalized anxiety disorder has been linked to high blood pressure, poor cardiovascular health and coronary artery disease.”

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Treatment Options For Patients With Anxiety

There are two primary treatments for individuals with anxiety:

• Cognitive behavioral therapy , which involves learning how to lower anxiety and face distressing situations.
• Medication management with antidepressants, which works well on its own but even better when coupled with CBT.

During therapy, continue to show your support by:

• Asking your loved one what you can do to help them.
• Asking if you can attend a therapy session to learn some skills to better support them.
• Making time for your own life and interests to sustain your energy.
• Encouraging your loved one to try another therapist if the first one isnt a good fit.

Effects Of Anxiety On Your Mind

These can include:

• feeling tense, nervous or unable to relax
• having a sense of dread, or fearing the worst
• feeling like the world is speeding up or slowing down
• feeling like other people can see you’re anxious and are looking at you
• feeling like you can’t stop worrying, or that bad things will happen if you stop worrying
• worrying about anxiety itself, for example worrying about when panic attacks might happen
• wanting lots of reassurance from other people or worrying that people are angry or upset with you
• worrying that you’re losing touch with reality
• rumination thinking a lot about bad experiences, or thinking over a situation again and again
• a type of dissociation where you feel disconnected from your mind or body, or like you are a character that you are watching in a film
• another type of dissociation where you feel disconnected from the world around you, or like the world isn’t real
• worrying a lot about things that might happen in the future you can read more about these sorts of worries on the Anxiety UK website.

“I could feel all these physical symptoms building inside me, literally filling every part of my body until I felt completely light-headed and disembodied.”

Anxiety and physical health problems

Having a physical illness or disability can also make you feel stressed and anxious, so it might sometimes feel like your anxiety problems and physical health problems are part of a vicious circle.

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Stress And Your Muscles

Stress makes you tense up. Thats good if youre facing down an angry predator. But if it persists, muscle tension causes several problems. Tension headaches and migraines can result, for instance. Tense muscles can provoke more serious anxiety disorders, too.

How you respond to stress could help determine how swiftly you recover from injury as well. If you become excessively fearful of reinjuring yourself, this can leave you in a state of chronic pain. Your muscles will seldom relax if you continue to feel fearful. This persistent tension can also lead to muscle atrophy, as it is difficult to move when you are intensely bound up by your own muscles. This is a problem that can get worse, as exercise is one of the most reliable means of relieving stress.

What Is Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Generalized anxiety disorder is a condition in which your worries overwhelm you to the point where your daily routine seems difficult to carry out, and you have been worrying this way for at least six months. You may feel on edge and have difficulty focusing on tasks. There may be a tendency to fear and expect the worst some call this catastrophic thinking. You may know that your worries are perhaps irrational, but you still go on feeling them.

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Excretory And Digestive Systems

Anxiety also affects your excretory and digestive systems. You may have stomachaches, nausea, diarrhea, and other digestive issues. Loss of appetite can also occur.

There may be a connection between anxiety disorders and the development of irritable bowel syndrome after a bowel infection. IBS can cause vomiting, diarrhea, or constipation.

Is Anxiety Causing These Issues

Its a good idea to see a doctor if your symptoms are affecting your mental health or making daily life difficult. Health conditions that cause the same symptoms can be ruled out by the primary care provider.

Its possible that you have anxiety if your physical symptoms arent caused by a medical condition. Anxiety and other mental health disorders may be diagnosed by a mental health professional.

Although there is no medical test for anxiety, a doctor, psychologist, therapist, or counsellor can use screening tests to help decide whether you have it.

To reach a proper diagnosis of an anxiety disorder, a mental health professional will ask you about all of your symptoms, both physical and emotional. Theyll also want to know how long youve been experiencing symptoms and whether theyve gotten worse or were brought on by a particular incident.

Its important to seek treatment for anxiety because it can have such a negative effect on ones health. Mild anxiety may go away on its own or after the anxiety-inducing incident has passed, but chronic anxiety is more likely to continue and worsen.

If you dont know where to start looking for a therapist, ask your health care provider for a recommendation.

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