What is anxiety?
Anxiety is generalized as a normal reaction to stress, although when anxiety becomes excessive and isn’t properly treated, it is then considered an anxiety disorder. Anxiety is categorized by emotional, physical and behavioral symptoms that are associated with fear and stress. Anxiety primarily affects the cognitive functions of the body and anxiety can slowly deteriorate the thinking processes and abilities, which limits an individual’s cognitive function. Emotions such as fear, negative thoughts and feelings of inadequacy contribute to the effects of anxiety on an individual’s cognitive functions. These emotions are frequently accompanied by physical symptoms, particularly fatigue, muscle aches, irritability and sweating.
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Panic Disorder: Individuals develop feelings of fear that occur repeatedly and suddenly. The panic attacks are intense, overwhelming and generally uncontrollable feelings of anxiety and physical symptoms. An Individual having a panic attack may experience shortness of breath, sweating and chest pain.
Social anxiety disorder: Individuals encounter overwhelming worry and self-consciousness regarding social situations. The fears are generally based on being judged by others, or their appearance or behavior that may be embarrassing or ridiculing.
Specific Phobias: Individuals develop fear of a specific object or event, such as animals, environments and certain physical activities.8 They experience highly levels of stress and fear to a situation that is uncommon and may cause the person to avoid these situations. 5
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD):
When an individual has been experiencing anxiety, with ongoing intrusive thoughts and fears, they often indulge themselves to certain behaviours to relieve their anxiety despite acknowledging the thoughts to be inharmonious. 5,
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This is most evident in individuals suffering from post-traumatic anxiety disorder.
In particularly the Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is related to specific brain dysfunctions. Individuals suffering from OCD may have abnormalities in a specific nerve pathway and a lack of attention. These factors may lead to the development of a Tourette syndrome (a neurological disorder) where individuals have repetitive and involuntary movements.
More specifically, individuals suffering from specific phobias’ have hindered cognitive functions as their dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), insula and the thalamus are far more active than a regular individual’s, this is evident when they encounter their specific phobias. Those with generalised anxiety disorder have weaker connections between the pre-frontal and anterior cortex of the brain, this was evident to be significantly weaker than those without anxiety disorders.28
Long-term effects of
Panic Attacks - they occur suddenly and may cause apprehension, terror and fear. A person may suffer from shortness of breath, chest pain, heart palpitations and impending doom.
“Social Anxiety Disorder is the extreme fear of being scrutinized and judged by others in social or performance situations:
Anxiety has several disorders that causes fear, worrying, nervousness and apprehension. Dealing with these disorders can affect how we feel which can cause physical symptoms. “Individuals find it difficult to control the worry” (Page 107). Generalized anxiety disorder has many different levels of various events or activities. People with that disorder have difficulties with concentrating sleeping or resting. This can mostly affect you when dealing with worrying like health issues, chores, being on time, work related task. Theirs other different types of link anxieties likes Panic disorder is an abrupt of intense fear or intense discomfort which you start to sweat, trembling, or shaking, feelings, or choking, chills, feeling, dizzy, Fear of dying and more.
One of the common disorders includes anxiety disorders. These disorders are exaggerations of our adaptive and normal reaction to stressful or fearful events. It is normal to feel scared or tense when facing any stressful situation. Anxiety is the natural response of human body. When a normal human being feels threatened, his natural body response behaves like an automatic alarm. Anxiety disorder is not a bad thing; it helps to stay focused and alert and motivates to solve problems. There are several types of anxiety disorder. This essay is based on one of the of anxiety disorders, such as Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
Today we know that panic attacks are a sudden urge of overwhelming fear and anxiety.
This research paper is designed to review articles and books of professional journals in anxiety disorders, definition of anxiety disorder, review of current and past treatments of anxiety disorders, the new section and changes to anxiety disorder in the DSM-5, new treatments for anxiety disorders and medications for anxiety disorders. This paper will show spiritual considerations for treating anxiety disorders and how
The most well known forms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, involves people who fear germs and want everything extremely clean, or people who are highly organized and have to have everything perfect. OCD, however, is described as having any obsessive and repetitive thoughts or actions. This means that anything from the need to compulsively organize and count things to having uncontrollable thoughts of harming others can be a sign of OCD.
OCD is “characterized” by two symptoms called obsessions and compulsions (Treating obsessive-compulsive disorder, 2009, p.4). Obsessions create anxiety from “intrusive and unwanted thoughts” (Solomon & Grant, 2014, p.646). The most common obsessions include “repeated thoughts about contamination, repeated doubts, a need to have things in a particular order, aggressive or horrific
According to psych central website’s article, OCD is an anxiety disorder characterized by recurrent and disturbing thoughts (called obsessions) and/or repetitive, ritualized behaviors that the person feels driven to perform (called compulsions).
The definition of Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is typically defined by the disorders characteristics. The characteristics of OCD are obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions often manifest from unreasonable beliefs, thoughts, and fears. Compulsions often manifest in the form of ritualistic behaviors. Mayoclinic.org explains that individuals with OCD can have one of the other where the issues of compulsions or obsessions are concerned (Diseases and Conditions). “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder” written by Gyula Bokor, MD, and Peter D. Anderson further distinguishes OCD by stating that “(OCD) consists of a pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control to the degree that flexibility, openness, and efficiency are impaired” (2014, p. 117). There are a number of disorders that are comorbid to OCD, meaning in the presence of one or more disorder. Bokor and Anderson state that often times Tourette’s syndrome and Tic disorders are a frequent comorbidity with OCD (2014, p. 117). Psychotic disorders like schizophrenia has been reported a comorbidity of OCD. Bokor and Anderson state that the mental composition of a patient with OCD can lie in comorbidity with numerous psychiatric disorders as well like panic disorder, social phobia, and posttraumatic stress disorder (2014, p. 118). The National Institute of Mental Health’s website explains that there are a number of treatments for OCD. The two most predominant forms of
Specific phobia is the disproportionate fear or avoidance of a particular object or situation. Phobias are intense, unreasonable fears that interfere with functioning. Anxiety and fear are common to be a part of most of the other anxiety disorders like social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and agoraphobia. The development and maintenance of a specific phobia can be the result of fear conditioning. The behavioral model of specific phobia is based upon the assumption that thoughts and beliefs can influence our own behavior, emotions, and physiology. This model is built from Mowrer’s two-factor model of conditioning. The learned preparedness model suggests that fears of objects with evolutionary significance may be more sustained after condition. Although not all people with negative experiences will develop phobias.
This essay will address the effects of how mindfulness works to improve the negative symptoms of anxiety when used as part of a psychological treatment by describing ways that mindfulness can treat anxiety and how attention regulation is activated in mindfulness based therapies. An evolving treatment used extensively by psychologists in recent years is, mindfulness. Mindfulness is an emergent treatment, which has seen many studies being conducted around. These studies of mechanisms of mindfulness are completed to find out information on the success of mindfulness and how the mindfulness treatment is conducted. There are many mechanisms in the complex treatment of mindfulness and attention regulation has been shown to be an effective component in reducing anxiety.
A phobia can best be defined as an abnormal, intense, and irrational fear. This fear can be of a given situation, organism, or object. Dictionary website (2010) states that the word phobia comes from the Greek word that means fear. For every letter in the alphabet there are phobias that start with the letters A to Z. An estimated 18 percent of U.S adult population is estimated to suffer some kind of phobia as stated in the Electronic Ardell Wellness Report (2010). In the mind of the person who has the fear the phobias are very real and scary to him or her. Most ordinary people would be surprised at the common everyday people, places, or things that some individuals are afraid of. To a person that has no phobias it is extremely hard
Anxiety in humans are in different forms as I have listed above, the different types of anxiety affects our bodies in different ways. Panic disorder causes people to feel terrified and often and repeadtly with no warning , other symptoms of panic attacks may include but not limited to chest sweating and chest pain often times a person may experience rapid heartbeats which causes the person to think they may be having a heart attack. They main symptom of panic attacks are they fear of any future panic attacks, this causes many people to ignore or disregard any past event which lead to previous
Anxiety is probably one of the most common mental disorders affecting more than 40 million adults in the United States alone each year. Humans who are developing anxiety can also develop depression leading to hospitalization. Given the fact that no one likes being in a hospital, people have found ways to calm and possibly treat this disorder without medicinal cures, if there are any. Chronic anxiety is excessive and exaggerated worry about certain life events. Not only does this affect behavior, it can affect symptoms in the physical body. Symptoms can include headaches, fatigue, frequent bowel movements, irritability, and so on and so forth. Overcoming anxiety using breathing techniques, exercising, or even finding the source of the anxiety attack can lead to a healthier lifestyle.