What Are the Different Types of Anxiety Disorder?
Anxiety can come in lots of different shapes and sizes.
What may be an every day worry to one person can develop into an anxiety disorder in another.
There is little rhyme or reason as to why some of us are more susceptible to anxiety than others.
Anxiety can also come and go depending on what else is going on in your life at the time, but it is worth taking the time to find out a little about the different types of anxiety disorder, if only so you can say,...
"no, that's not me".
Anxiety disorders can be broken down into four distinct groups.
A person can suffer from one, two or all of them at the same time.
Phobias There are two main types of phobia.
You can develop a specific phobia which is where you have an irrational fear of something that poses little or no threat.
Arachnophobia for example is a fear of spiders.
Generally speaking if you live in the Northern Hemisphere you have little to fear from spiders but it is surprising how many people suffer from this fear.
This is what is called a simple phobia; it is an irrational fear of one thing that poses little threat to you in your every day life.
You can also get complex phobias which is where a number of different sources of anxiety come together at the same time.
An example of this could be the fear of flying where you may have a fear of the plane crashing combined with a fear of confined spaces and a fear of being in a crowded space.
Social phobias are another common phobia where people fear being humiliated or embarrassed in a social situation.
This can be very debilitating fro people who suffer from it as they will start to avoid all social situations, often ending up isolated by their fear.
Panic Attacks or Panic Disorder Panic attacks are caused by extreme anxiety.
Our fear causes the body to react with the fight or flight reaction preparing us for action whenever we feel threatened.
With a panic attack the body overreacts to an anxiety causing the extreme symptoms of a panic attack.
Within our brain is a small organ called the amygdala which controls this response.
This organ acts like a switch controlling anxiety levels, turning our bodies response to stress on and off.
What appears to happen to people who suffer from panic attacks is that the switch gets stuck in the on position so that we are constantly overreacting to stress and anxiety.
With training it is possible to reverse this and get back to "normal".
(GAD)Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
If you suffer from panic attacks you may well end up with a generalized anxiety disorder.
This is where you end up with a feeling of general anxiety long after the effects of a panic attack have gone.
The way I have described this myself is that it is rather like having a bucket of stress inside you.
Normally that bucket fills at stressful times and empties when we relax.
If you have generalized anxiety the bucket never empties, you always have a high level of stress or anxiety which makes you susceptible to overreacting whenever this is added to.
This is the root cause of panic attacks which appear to come out of nowhere but have been fed by the high levels of anxiety that you feel on a day to day basis.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) OCD is aptly named.
It is literally where obsessive or unwanted thoughts cause you to control your actions compulsively.
For example, some people become obsessive about being clean and may feel compelled to wash their hands repeatedly or as soon as any kind of contamination has taken place.
Not being able to do so can cause them severe anxiety and panic.
OCD can have a devastating effect on people's lives leaving them unable to function normally and also leaving them open to feelings of humiliation.
As I said at the beginning, you may be suffering from one or all of these conditions.
The good news is that they are all treatable, simply because they all stem from the same problem or root cause so the same techniques that treat for example: anxiety and panic attacks can also be used to treat OCD and different phobias.
What may be an every day worry to one person can develop into an anxiety disorder in another.
There is little rhyme or reason as to why some of us are more susceptible to anxiety than others.
Anxiety can also come and go depending on what else is going on in your life at the time, but it is worth taking the time to find out a little about the different types of anxiety disorder, if only so you can say,...
"no, that's not me".
Anxiety disorders can be broken down into four distinct groups.
A person can suffer from one, two or all of them at the same time.
Phobias There are two main types of phobia.
You can develop a specific phobia which is where you have an irrational fear of something that poses little or no threat.
Arachnophobia for example is a fear of spiders.
Generally speaking if you live in the Northern Hemisphere you have little to fear from spiders but it is surprising how many people suffer from this fear.
This is what is called a simple phobia; it is an irrational fear of one thing that poses little threat to you in your every day life.
You can also get complex phobias which is where a number of different sources of anxiety come together at the same time.
An example of this could be the fear of flying where you may have a fear of the plane crashing combined with a fear of confined spaces and a fear of being in a crowded space.
Social phobias are another common phobia where people fear being humiliated or embarrassed in a social situation.
This can be very debilitating fro people who suffer from it as they will start to avoid all social situations, often ending up isolated by their fear.
Panic Attacks or Panic Disorder Panic attacks are caused by extreme anxiety.
Our fear causes the body to react with the fight or flight reaction preparing us for action whenever we feel threatened.
With a panic attack the body overreacts to an anxiety causing the extreme symptoms of a panic attack.
Within our brain is a small organ called the amygdala which controls this response.
This organ acts like a switch controlling anxiety levels, turning our bodies response to stress on and off.
What appears to happen to people who suffer from panic attacks is that the switch gets stuck in the on position so that we are constantly overreacting to stress and anxiety.
With training it is possible to reverse this and get back to "normal".
(GAD)Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
If you suffer from panic attacks you may well end up with a generalized anxiety disorder.
This is where you end up with a feeling of general anxiety long after the effects of a panic attack have gone.
The way I have described this myself is that it is rather like having a bucket of stress inside you.
Normally that bucket fills at stressful times and empties when we relax.
If you have generalized anxiety the bucket never empties, you always have a high level of stress or anxiety which makes you susceptible to overreacting whenever this is added to.
This is the root cause of panic attacks which appear to come out of nowhere but have been fed by the high levels of anxiety that you feel on a day to day basis.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) OCD is aptly named.
It is literally where obsessive or unwanted thoughts cause you to control your actions compulsively.
For example, some people become obsessive about being clean and may feel compelled to wash their hands repeatedly or as soon as any kind of contamination has taken place.
Not being able to do so can cause them severe anxiety and panic.
OCD can have a devastating effect on people's lives leaving them unable to function normally and also leaving them open to feelings of humiliation.
As I said at the beginning, you may be suffering from one or all of these conditions.
The good news is that they are all treatable, simply because they all stem from the same problem or root cause so the same techniques that treat for example: anxiety and panic attacks can also be used to treat OCD and different phobias.
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