ANXIETY

What Is Anxiety Disorder?
While everyone experiences feelings of anxiousness every now and then, anxiety disorder is a mental health issue where a person suffers from feelings of worry that don’t get better, but in fact, increase in severity over time. The anxiety often disrupts the patient’s daily responsibilities, the person’s occupation or education, and his or her relationships. Anxiety disorder can occur in a variety of forms but is most often found in 1 of 3 forms including Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, and Social Anxiety Disorder or Social Phobia.

What Symptoms Are Associated With Anxiety?
Generalized Anxiety Disorder is categorized by feelings of anxiousness in various situations and stresses in everyday life. Worry exists even when there is no obvious reason for it and people can overly stress about an otherwise resolvable issue. Getting through the day is even difficult. Panic Disorder can be hereditary and is characterized by sudden, repetitive attacks of extreme fear and/or panic, commonly referred to as a panic attack. Panic attacks are often described as feeling like a heart attack and the person ends up being very fearful of the attacks and worrying about when the next one will happen. It can cause many difficulties in life because the person will avoid situations he or she associates with the attacks. Social phobia can also be hereditary. Those with social phobia experience fear in relation to social situations and interaction. Interacting with people, even speaking, can be terrifying. Patients with social phobia often have trouble making friends and may even have some type of physical reaction when interacting with others.

How Is Anxiety Disorder Treated?
Traditionally, a customized combination of therapy and medication is used to treat anxiety disorders. The prescribed treatment plan will depend on the patient, the severity of the disorder, and how he or she is responding to therapy or medication. Dynamic Emotional Wellness providers creates individualized treatment plans for each patient with anxiety as every patient has a unique experience and specific needs to be addressed.