Anxiety Disorders and Panic Attacks
Types of Anxiety and Symptoms
1. WHAT IS ANXIETY?
2. WHAT ARE THE COMMON SYMPTOMS OF ANXIETY?
3. WHAT IS AN ANXIETY DISORDER?
4. WHAT ARE THE VARIOUS ANXIETY DISORDERS AND THEIR SYMPTOMS?
1) PANIC DISORDER
2) AGORAPHOBIA
3) SOCIAL PHOBIA
4) SPECIFIC PHOBIA
5) GENERALIZED ANXIETY DISORDER
6) OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER
7) POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
1. WHAT IS ANXIETY?
Anxiety is a state of apprehension and uneasiness. When you experience anxiety, you often can’t specify what it is you’re anxious about. The focus of anxiety is more internal than external. It seems to be a response to a vague, distant, or even unrecognized danger. You might be anxious about “losing control” of yourself or some situation. Or you might feel a vague anxiety about “something bad happening.”
Anxiety can appear in different forms and at different levels of intensity. It can range in severity from a mere twinge of uneasiness to a full-blown panic attack marked by heart palpitations, disorientation, and terror. Anxiety over specific situations tend to be out of proportion or unrealistic and may become a phobia if you find yourself persistently avoiding the situation.
Often anxiety can be brought on merely by thinking about a particular situation. You may worry yourself into a frenzy when you feel distressed about what might happen when or if you have to face one of your phobic situations.
2. WHAT ARE THE COMMON SYMPTOMS OF ANXIETY?
Having at least four of the symptoms described below would be considered a full-blown panic attack:
1. Shortness of breath or a feeling of being smothered
2. Heart palpitations (rapid or irregular heartbeat)
3. Trembling or shaking
4. Sweating
5. Feeling of choking
6. Nausea or abdominal distress
7. Numbness or tingling in hands and feet
8. Dizziness or unsteadiness
9. Feeling of detachment or being out of touch with yourself – as if you’re “not all there”
10. Hot flashes or chills
11. Chest pain or discomfort
12. Fear of dying
13. Fear of going crazy or out of control
3. WHAT IS AN ANXIETY DISORDER?
Anxiety disorders are distinguished from every day, normal anxiety in that they are (1) more intense, (2) they last longer, the anxiety may persist for months instead of going away after the stressful situation has passed, or (3) the anxiety leads to phobias that interfere with your life.
4. WHAT ARE THE VARIOUS ANXIETY DISORDERS AND THEIR SYMPTOMS?
1) PANIC DISORDER
Sudden episodes of apprehension or intense fear that occur “out of the blue” without any apparent cause. Intense panic usually lasts no more than a few minutes, but, in rare instances, can return in “waves” for up to a couple hours. Having at least four of the symptoms described above would be considered a full-blown panic attack.
2) AGORAPHOBIA
A fear of being in situations from which escape might be difficult or in which help might be unavailable. You may avoid grocery stores or freeways, for example, because these are situations from which escape might be difficult or embarrassing in the event of panic. The fear is also of embarrassment of what other people will think should you be seen having a panic attack.
AGORAPHOBIC SITUATIONS AVOIDED include:
1. Crowded public places (grocery stores, department stores, restaurants)
2. Enclosed or confined places (through tunnels, over bridges, elevators, small rooms)
3. Public transportation (buses, planes, trains)
4. Being at home alone
5. Going far away from home or far from a “safe person” (usually your spouse, partner, a parent, or anyone to whom you have a primary attachment).
6. Driving on freeways or alone or driving beyond a certain short distance from home
7. In severe cases unable to walk a few yards from home or may even be housebound
3) SOCIAL PHOBIA
This phobia involves fear of embarrassment or humiliation in situations where you are exposed to the scrutiny of others or must perform. It is usually so strong that it causes you to avoid the situation altogether. Typically, your concern is that you will say or do something that will cause others to judge you as being anxious, weak, crazy or stupid. Your concern is generally out of proportion to the situation, and you recognize that it’s excessive.
SOCIAL PHOBIAS include:
1. Fear of public speaking
2. Fear of crowds
3. Fear of taking examinations
4. Fear of being watched at work
5. Fear of sitting in any kind of group (at work, in school classrooms, at social functions)
6. Fear of writing or signing documents in the presence of others
7. Fear of choking on or spilling food while eating in front of others
8. Fear of blushing in public
9. Fear of using public toilets
4) SPECIFIC PHOBIA
Specific phobia typically involves a strong fear and avoidance of one particular type of object or situation. The fear and avoidance are strong enough to interfere with your normal routines, work, or relationships, and to cause you significant distress. Even though you recognize its irrationalities, a specific phobia can cause you considerable anxiety. People with specific phobias are usually functioning at a high level in all other respects.
SPECIFIC PHOBIAS include:
1. Animal Phobias - (snakes, bats, rats, spiders, bees, dogs, and other creatures)
2. Acrophobia - Fear of Heights - (fear of falling, experienced as being drawn to edge and an urge to jump)
3. Elevator Phobia - (fear the elevator will get stuck and be trapped inside, or cables will break and will crash)
4. Airplane Phobia - (fear the plane will crash, be hijacked or bombed)
5. Doctor or Dentist Phobia – (fear of painful procedures or injections)
6. Blood-Injury Phobia – (tendency to faint, rather than panic, if exposed to blood or your own pain through injections or inadvertent injury)
7. Illness Phobia – (fear of contracting and/or ultimately succumbing to a specific illness, such as a heart attack or cancer. Tend to seek constant reassurance from doctors and will avoid any situation that reminds you of the dreaded disease.)
8. Water Phobia – (fear of drowning)
5) GENERALIZED ANXIETY DISORDER
Chronic anxiety and worry that persists over at least six months without being accompanied by panic attacks, phobias or obsessions. You tend to spend a lot of time worrying about stressful life circumstances (such as finances, relationships, health, school and/or work performance). You find it difficult to exercise much control over your worrying. Moreover, the intensity and frequency of the worry are always out of proportion to the actual likelihood of the feared events happening. Your worry and associated symptoms cause you significant distress and/or interfere with your ability to function occupationally, socially, or in other important areas.
GENERALIZED ANXIETY DISORDER SYMPTOMS include:
1. Restlessness – feeling keyed up or on edge
2. Being easily fatigued
3. Difficulty concentrating or mind going blank
4. Irritability
5. Muscle tension
6. Difficulties with sleep
6) OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER
OBSESSIONS are recurring ideas, thoughts, images, or impulses that seem senseless but nonetheless continue to intrude into your mind. Generally an unpleasant fantasy of catastrophe. Examples include images of violence, thoughts of hurting, harming or doing violence to someone else, or fears of leaving on lights or the stove or leaving your door unlocked. You recognize that these fears are irrational and try to suppress them, but they continue to intrude into your mind for hours, days, weeks, or longer. These thoughts or images are not necessarily excessive worries about real-life problems and are usually unrelated to a real-life problem.
COMPULSIONS are behaviors or rituals that you perform to an extreme and disruptive degree to dispel the anxiety brought up by obsessions. For example, you may wash your hands numerous times to dispel a fear of being contaminated, check the stove again and again to see if it is turned off, or look continually in your rearview mirror while driving to reduce your anxiety about having hit somebody. You realize that these rituals are unreasonable, yet you feel compelled to perform them to ward off the anxiety associated with your particular obsession.
The most common COMPULSIONS are:
1. Washing
2. Checking
3. Counting
4. Hoarding
7. POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder can occur in anyone in the wake of a severe trauma outside the normal range of human experience. These are traumas that would produce intense fear, terror, and feelings of helplessness in anyone. This includes natural disasters such as earthquakes or tornadoes, car or plane crashes, rape, assault, combat, or other violent crimes against yourself or your immediate family. If you have been through a trauma where others around you have died, you may suffer from guilt about having survived. Children with the disorder tend not to relive the trauma consciously, but continually reenact it in their play or in distressing dreams.
POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER SYMPTOMS include:
1. Repetitive, distressing thoughts about the event
2. Nightmares related to the event
3. Flashbacks so intense that you feel or act as though the trauma were occurring all over again
4. Difficulty falling or staying asleep
5. Difficulty concentrating
6. Startling easy
7. Irritability and outbursts of anger
8. An attempt to avoid thoughts or feelings associated with the trauma
9. An attempt to avoid activities or external situations associated with the trauma – such as a phobia about driving developing after you have been in an auto accident
10. Emotional numbness – being out of touch with your feelings
11. Feelings of detachment or estrangement from others
12. Losing interest in activities that used to give you pleasure
2. WHAT ARE THE COMMON SYMPTOMS OF ANXIETY?
3. WHAT IS AN ANXIETY DISORDER?
4. WHAT ARE THE VARIOUS ANXIETY DISORDERS AND THEIR SYMPTOMS?
1) PANIC DISORDER
2) AGORAPHOBIA
3) SOCIAL PHOBIA
4) SPECIFIC PHOBIA
5) GENERALIZED ANXIETY DISORDER
6) OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER
7) POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
1. WHAT IS ANXIETY?
Anxiety is a state of apprehension and uneasiness. When you experience anxiety, you often can’t specify what it is you’re anxious about. The focus of anxiety is more internal than external. It seems to be a response to a vague, distant, or even unrecognized danger. You might be anxious about “losing control” of yourself or some situation. Or you might feel a vague anxiety about “something bad happening.”
Anxiety can appear in different forms and at different levels of intensity. It can range in severity from a mere twinge of uneasiness to a full-blown panic attack marked by heart palpitations, disorientation, and terror. Anxiety over specific situations tend to be out of proportion or unrealistic and may become a phobia if you find yourself persistently avoiding the situation.
Often anxiety can be brought on merely by thinking about a particular situation. You may worry yourself into a frenzy when you feel distressed about what might happen when or if you have to face one of your phobic situations.
2. WHAT ARE THE COMMON SYMPTOMS OF ANXIETY?
Having at least four of the symptoms described below would be considered a full-blown panic attack:
1. Shortness of breath or a feeling of being smothered
2. Heart palpitations (rapid or irregular heartbeat)
3. Trembling or shaking
4. Sweating
5. Feeling of choking
6. Nausea or abdominal distress
7. Numbness or tingling in hands and feet
8. Dizziness or unsteadiness
9. Feeling of detachment or being out of touch with yourself – as if you’re “not all there”
10. Hot flashes or chills
11. Chest pain or discomfort
12. Fear of dying
13. Fear of going crazy or out of control
3. WHAT IS AN ANXIETY DISORDER?
Anxiety disorders are distinguished from every day, normal anxiety in that they are (1) more intense, (2) they last longer, the anxiety may persist for months instead of going away after the stressful situation has passed, or (3) the anxiety leads to phobias that interfere with your life.
4. WHAT ARE THE VARIOUS ANXIETY DISORDERS AND THEIR SYMPTOMS?
1) PANIC DISORDER
Sudden episodes of apprehension or intense fear that occur “out of the blue” without any apparent cause. Intense panic usually lasts no more than a few minutes, but, in rare instances, can return in “waves” for up to a couple hours. Having at least four of the symptoms described above would be considered a full-blown panic attack.
2) AGORAPHOBIA
A fear of being in situations from which escape might be difficult or in which help might be unavailable. You may avoid grocery stores or freeways, for example, because these are situations from which escape might be difficult or embarrassing in the event of panic. The fear is also of embarrassment of what other people will think should you be seen having a panic attack.
AGORAPHOBIC SITUATIONS AVOIDED include:
1. Crowded public places (grocery stores, department stores, restaurants)
2. Enclosed or confined places (through tunnels, over bridges, elevators, small rooms)
3. Public transportation (buses, planes, trains)
4. Being at home alone
5. Going far away from home or far from a “safe person” (usually your spouse, partner, a parent, or anyone to whom you have a primary attachment).
6. Driving on freeways or alone or driving beyond a certain short distance from home
7. In severe cases unable to walk a few yards from home or may even be housebound
3) SOCIAL PHOBIA
This phobia involves fear of embarrassment or humiliation in situations where you are exposed to the scrutiny of others or must perform. It is usually so strong that it causes you to avoid the situation altogether. Typically, your concern is that you will say or do something that will cause others to judge you as being anxious, weak, crazy or stupid. Your concern is generally out of proportion to the situation, and you recognize that it’s excessive.
SOCIAL PHOBIAS include:
1. Fear of public speaking
2. Fear of crowds
3. Fear of taking examinations
4. Fear of being watched at work
5. Fear of sitting in any kind of group (at work, in school classrooms, at social functions)
6. Fear of writing or signing documents in the presence of others
7. Fear of choking on or spilling food while eating in front of others
8. Fear of blushing in public
9. Fear of using public toilets
4) SPECIFIC PHOBIA
Specific phobia typically involves a strong fear and avoidance of one particular type of object or situation. The fear and avoidance are strong enough to interfere with your normal routines, work, or relationships, and to cause you significant distress. Even though you recognize its irrationalities, a specific phobia can cause you considerable anxiety. People with specific phobias are usually functioning at a high level in all other respects.
SPECIFIC PHOBIAS include:
1. Animal Phobias - (snakes, bats, rats, spiders, bees, dogs, and other creatures)
2. Acrophobia - Fear of Heights - (fear of falling, experienced as being drawn to edge and an urge to jump)
3. Elevator Phobia - (fear the elevator will get stuck and be trapped inside, or cables will break and will crash)
4. Airplane Phobia - (fear the plane will crash, be hijacked or bombed)
5. Doctor or Dentist Phobia – (fear of painful procedures or injections)
6. Blood-Injury Phobia – (tendency to faint, rather than panic, if exposed to blood or your own pain through injections or inadvertent injury)
7. Illness Phobia – (fear of contracting and/or ultimately succumbing to a specific illness, such as a heart attack or cancer. Tend to seek constant reassurance from doctors and will avoid any situation that reminds you of the dreaded disease.)
8. Water Phobia – (fear of drowning)
5) GENERALIZED ANXIETY DISORDER
Chronic anxiety and worry that persists over at least six months without being accompanied by panic attacks, phobias or obsessions. You tend to spend a lot of time worrying about stressful life circumstances (such as finances, relationships, health, school and/or work performance). You find it difficult to exercise much control over your worrying. Moreover, the intensity and frequency of the worry are always out of proportion to the actual likelihood of the feared events happening. Your worry and associated symptoms cause you significant distress and/or interfere with your ability to function occupationally, socially, or in other important areas.
GENERALIZED ANXIETY DISORDER SYMPTOMS include:
1. Restlessness – feeling keyed up or on edge
2. Being easily fatigued
3. Difficulty concentrating or mind going blank
4. Irritability
5. Muscle tension
6. Difficulties with sleep
6) OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER
OBSESSIONS are recurring ideas, thoughts, images, or impulses that seem senseless but nonetheless continue to intrude into your mind. Generally an unpleasant fantasy of catastrophe. Examples include images of violence, thoughts of hurting, harming or doing violence to someone else, or fears of leaving on lights or the stove or leaving your door unlocked. You recognize that these fears are irrational and try to suppress them, but they continue to intrude into your mind for hours, days, weeks, or longer. These thoughts or images are not necessarily excessive worries about real-life problems and are usually unrelated to a real-life problem.
COMPULSIONS are behaviors or rituals that you perform to an extreme and disruptive degree to dispel the anxiety brought up by obsessions. For example, you may wash your hands numerous times to dispel a fear of being contaminated, check the stove again and again to see if it is turned off, or look continually in your rearview mirror while driving to reduce your anxiety about having hit somebody. You realize that these rituals are unreasonable, yet you feel compelled to perform them to ward off the anxiety associated with your particular obsession.
The most common COMPULSIONS are:
1. Washing
2. Checking
3. Counting
4. Hoarding
7. POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder can occur in anyone in the wake of a severe trauma outside the normal range of human experience. These are traumas that would produce intense fear, terror, and feelings of helplessness in anyone. This includes natural disasters such as earthquakes or tornadoes, car or plane crashes, rape, assault, combat, or other violent crimes against yourself or your immediate family. If you have been through a trauma where others around you have died, you may suffer from guilt about having survived. Children with the disorder tend not to relive the trauma consciously, but continually reenact it in their play or in distressing dreams.
POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER SYMPTOMS include:
1. Repetitive, distressing thoughts about the event
2. Nightmares related to the event
3. Flashbacks so intense that you feel or act as though the trauma were occurring all over again
4. Difficulty falling or staying asleep
5. Difficulty concentrating
6. Startling easy
7. Irritability and outbursts of anger
8. An attempt to avoid thoughts or feelings associated with the trauma
9. An attempt to avoid activities or external situations associated with the trauma – such as a phobia about driving developing after you have been in an auto accident
10. Emotional numbness – being out of touch with your feelings
11. Feelings of detachment or estrangement from others
12. Losing interest in activities that used to give you pleasure