Anxiety Treatment

Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric illnesses, affecting both children and adults. An estimated 40 million American adults (almost 1 in 10) suffer from anxiety disorders, but only about 13 million receive treatment, even though the disorders are highly treatable. (www.adaa.org) When it comes to mental health challenges, rather than asking how to get rid of anxiety, it’s often more useful to ask about how to deal with anxiety. For most people, anxiety requires an ongoing management strategy. It’s not a one-and-done thing.

What is anxiety?

“Anxiety disorder” is an umbrella term that includes a broad array of symptoms, all of which involve varying levels of fear. Acute anxiety comes on quickly. Separation anxiety makes it hard to leave someone. Generalized anxiety makes you feel worried much of the time. Panic disorder, social anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are all forms of anxiety.

Anxiety symptoms

The first step is recognizing that you need help. People who suffer from prolonged anxiety often exhibit the following symptoms:

Excessive worry about health, money, family, work, or school performance—even when there are no signs of trouble
Irrational expectations of the worst outcome in many situations
Inability to relax
Irritability
Insomnia
Tiredness
Headaches
Muscle tension
Trembling or twitching
Frequent urination
Persistent physical symptoms that do not respond to treatment, such as headaches, digestive disorders and chronic pain

Causes of anxiety

Sometimes anxiety stems from an outside influence: a traumatic event, a reaction to a medication, chronic pain, or a hormonal imbalance. Other times, anxiety is internally driven. Unfortunately, many people wait to seek treatment until the anxiety manifests in the symptoms above.

It’s important to recognize that anxiety has many causes, often a combination of genetics, social environment, mental processes, and physiological health. Understanding family history can be very helpful. Although family members may not have been diagnosed with anything specific, hearing stories about the odd behaviors of aunts or uncles or grandparents or cousins can give people a clue about genetic predispositions for an anxiety disorder.

Coping with anxiety

When people feel overwhelmed by uncomfortable emotions, they sometimes self-medicate, using drugs or alcohol as a means of escape. Other coping mechanisms include using food as a means of comfort, or other self-defeating behaviors like excessive spending, uncontrolled gambling, or too much time online.

The problem with many mental health disorders is that they can make it harder to make healthy decisions. With anxiety, people can be paralyzed by fear that they’ll be judged or that other terrible consequences may occur as a result of reaching out.

To reduce stress, activities like meditation, yoga, spending time with friends or even just taking a walk can help you deal with anxiety. And consistently getting a good night’s sleep not only reduces stress, but provides you with enough physical and mental energy to take on daily responsibilities.