What is Anxiety Disorder?
Anxiety is a feeling of fear or dread over anticipated conditions. While it is normal for everyone to feel anxious at times, however, someone with an anxiety disorder will worry and feel nervous about their everyday activities. Their worry is excessive, disproportionate to the situation and sometimes even in situations that don’t pose a threat. It has a physical as well as a psychological component. Long standing anxiety disorders can also lead to various medical illnesses. Anxiety Disorders are among the most persistent mental problems and often last for decades.
Common symptoms:
- Cognitive – Feeling of apprehension or dread, Trouble concentrating, Anticipating the worst, impending sense of doom, sense of loss of control
- Neurological- Headache, tingling and numbness, vertigo
- Digestive/ Abdominal- pain, nausea, diarrhoea, dry mouth
- Respiratory- shortness of breath, difficulty in breathing, sighing breathing
- Cardiac- palpitations, chest pain
- Muscular-fatigue, tremors, tetany
- Uro-genital- frequent urination, urgency, dyspareunia, impotence, vaginismus, sexual disorders
Causes:
- Family history/ genetics
- Environmental stressors
- Adverse childhood experiences
- Overcontrolling or overprotective parenting
- Emotional trauma
- Sexual abuse
- Medical illnesses (Diabetes, hypertension, head injury or other chronic illnesses)
- Drug abuse
Types of Anxiety Disorders:
- Generalised anxiety disorder
- Panic disorder
- Specific phobia
- Separation Anxiety disorder
- Social Anxiety Disorder
- Agoraphobia
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Conditions associated with untreated anxiety:
- Depression
- Panic disorder
- Sleep disorder
- Brain fog
- Relationship issues
- Workplace problems
- Substance abuse
- Medical conditions (hypertension, diabetes, heart attack, stoke)