Anxiety

According to Wikipedia, anxiety is a “psychological and physiological state characterized by cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components.”  This usually causes a sense of fear, uneasiness, and worry.  Anxiety can occur when fear is not present and can stand alone and is considered to be a normal reaction to stress.  Anxiety might help someone to deal with a difficult problem in their life by allowing them to cope.  Some symptoms of anxiety include: heart palpitations, tension, fatigue, nausea, shortness of breath, stomach aches, headaches, and chest pain.  There are many types of anxiety disorders including: panic disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders, post traumatic stress disorder, social anxiety disorder, phobias, and generalized anxiety disorder. 

Disorders

Panic disorders can strike at any time and leave the person with a feeling like they’re about to experience a heart attack.  In Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) patients, they’re overwhelmed by constant rituals and routines on a much greater scale than the average human being.  They perform them over and over again countless times with little to no satisfaction anxiety-wise.  Patients who experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are extremely anxious following a terrifying event such as a sexual assault, car accident, etc.  They experience nightmares and thoughts all the time related to the event in question.  Social anxiety disorder causes the patient to feel like they’re being judged by others all the time which causes embarrassment and anxiety.  Persons with specific phobias, have an extreme fear of a certain object or situation.  Their level of fear is so much greater than the actual severity of the situation needs to be.  This may cause the person to withhold from certain social events or activities such as flying, or heights.  With generalized anxiety disorder, the person is consumed with excessive worry all the time for little or no reason at all.      

Treatment

Depending on the severity of the anxiety and the condition being treated, anxiety disorders may be treated with counseling and/or antidepressants.  Unfortunately, many patients go untreated for many years because they fail to realize that it’s a real disorder that needs to be clinically treated.  The two counseling therapies to treat anxiety include cognitive behavioral therapy and social skills training.