Anxiety & Anxiety Disorders
What is anxiety?
Anxiety is a natural human emotion that everyone experiences from time to time. It's your body's built-in alarm system, designed to alert you to potential threats and help you respond to challenges. When you feel anxious before a job interview, an important presentation, or a medical appointment, that's your mind and body preparing you to handle the situation ahead.
This normal anxiety serves an important purpose. It sharpens your focus, increases your alertness, and motivates you to prepare and problem-solve. These feelings typically pass once the stressful situation is over, and they don't significantly interfere with your daily life.
When Does Anxiety Become a Disorder?
Anxiety crosses the line into a disorder when it becomes persistent, excessive, and begins to interfere with your ability to function in daily life. Unlike the temporary worry before a big event, anxiety disorders involve intense fear or worry that doesn't go away and may actually get worse over time.
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People with anxiety disorders often experience symptoms that feel overwhelming and difficult to control. The anxiety may feel out of proportion to the actual situation, or it may occur even when there's no clear threat or stressor present. These feelings can become so distressing that they lead to avoiding certain situations, places, or activities entirely.
Learn more about specific anxiety disorders and their treatments:
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) involves persistent and excessive worry about various aspects of daily life, such as work, health, family, or finances. People with GAD often describe feeling like they can't turn off their worried thoughts, even when they know their concerns are out of proportion to the situation.
Social Anxiety Disorder is characterized by intense fear of social situations where you might be judged, embarrassed, or humiliated. This goes beyond typical shyness and can make everyday interactions like meeting new people, speaking in groups, or even eating in front of others feel overwhelming.
Panic Disorder involves recurrent, unexpected panic attacks—sudden episodes of intense fear accompanied by physical symptoms like heart palpitations, sweating, trembling, shortness of breath, and feelings of impending doom. People with panic disorder often worry about having another attack and may avoid places where previous attacks occurred.
Specific Phobias are intense, irrational fears of particular objects or situations, such as heights, flying, animals, or receiving injections. The fear is disproportionate to any actual danger and can lead to elaborate avoidance behaviors.
Specific Phobias →
Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) →
Signs and Symptoms
Anxiety disorders affect people physically, emotionally, and behaviorally. Common symptoms include:
Physical symptoms such as rapid heartbeat, sweating, trembling, fatigue, muscle tension, headaches, stomach problems, and difficulty sleeping.
Emotional symptoms including persistent worry, feeling on edge or restless, difficulty concentrating, irritability, and a sense of dread or impending danger.
Behavioral changes like avoiding situations that trigger anxiety, difficulty making decisions, seeking constant reassurance, or developing safety behaviors and rituals.
How Anxiety & Anxiety Disorders Are Treated
Evidence-Based Psychotherapy
The most effective and lasting treatment for anxiety disorders involves working with a therapist trained in evidence-based approaches, particularly Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). These therapeutic approaches have decades of research demonstrating their effectiveness and are considered the gold standard in anxiety treatment.
Therapy addresses anxiety on multiple levels, exploring how thoughts, emotions, and behaviors interact while developing practical skills for managing difficult moments. The therapeutic process helps identify patterns that maintain anxiety and creates new ways of responding. This involves both understanding what keeps anxiety going and taking action to change it, whether that means shifting unhelpful patterns or learning to respond to uncomfortable feelings differently.
The skills developed through therapy become lasting tools that extend well beyond the sessions themselves, helping people not just manage symptoms but build the resilience and confidence needed to live fully.
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The Role of Medication
Sometimes, particularly during periods of intense anxiety, medication prescribed by a psychiatrist can provide helpful relief. Medication can reduce symptom severity and make it easier to participate in daily activities and engage in therapy. However, medication addresses symptoms rather than the underlying causes of anxiety, and some anti-anxiety medications carry risks with long-term use, including potential dependence. For many people, a combination of therapy and short-term medication works best, though therapy alone is often sufficient and provides the most lasting results. Any medication use should be carefully monitored by a qualified healthcare professional.
Taking the First Step
​Recognizing that you might have an anxiety disorder is an important first step. If anxiety is affecting your relationships, work, school, or overall quality of life, reaching out for professional help can make a real difference. You don't have to struggle alone, and you deserve support in managing these challenging feelings.
Therapy provides a safe, confidential space to understand your anxiety, develop coping strategies, and work toward lasting change. With the right support, you can learn to manage anxiety effectively and reclaim your life from worry and fear.