Anxiety – An Overview

You may often get feelings of nervousness, worry or an uneasiness about a future events that could be termed anxiety. However, if this happens without reason, it could be characterized as a disorder.

If you come across a person who is always nervous and worried, he could have an anxiety disorder. This is often accompanied by panic attacks and compulsive behavior. It has certain emotional, cognitive, behavioral as well as some somatic components. Anxiety is something that every person feels at some point in their lives, especially when experiencing stress. However, this becomes a disorder only if it is of a permanent nature and without any particular reason.

There are many anxiety symptoms. The physical effects of the disorder include fatigue, heart palpitations, chest-pain, nausea, muscle weakness followed by tension, stomach aches, headaches and shortness of breath. When this happens, the heart rate and blood pressure increase, there is an increase in sweating and blood flow to certain muscles increases and the digestive and immune functions are also affected. The external signs include sweating, pale skin, papillary dilation and even trembling. A panic attack is quite common in such cases and the person may feel that he or she is going to pass out.

Anxiety – The Effects

The emotional effects include problems concentrating, feelings of apprehension, feeling jumpy or tense, irritability, anticipating the worst, restlessness, feeling as if your mind has gone blank, nightmares, obsessions about certain sensations, watching and even waiting for certain signs and occurrences of danger, and so on. Cognitive effects related to anxiety may include thoughts or fear of death.

The behavioral effects can appear in the form of withdrawal from certain situations which could have an effect on a persons professional life. This may come across in the form of nail biting, foot tapping or any other form of motor tension and variations in sleeping patterns.

Anxiety and its Symptoms

Anxiety could be a symptom of a disease or other existing disorders such as depression. Diagnosis of the disease or disorder should be sought to help treat this condition. There are many forms of anxiety such as, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), a panic disorder, a panic disorder with agoraphobia, certain phobias, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), a post-traumatic stress disorder, a separation anxiety or a childhood disorder.

Anxiety treatments include various therapies such as psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and  pharmaceutical therapy. Certain medications such as SSRIs, Benzodiazepines, are said to be useful in most cases. Please talk to your doctor before taking any type of drugs.

For more information on anxiety visit NIMH.