What is anxiety?
Anxiety is a normal emotion, but when it becomes excessive it creates profound stress.
Anxiety becomes a problem when it prevents us from functioning optimally, when it disrupts our lives, and when it creates other problems.
Some anxiety is necessary to facilitate our performance. For example the athlete who is moderately anxious will perform better than one who experiences no anxiety or the one who is excessively anxious.
Anxiety takes on many forms and forms a large portion of mental health problems.
The types of anxiety are:
1. Generalized Anxiety
This anxiety affects most of our lives and is not focused on a specific object as with a phobia, or limited to specific instances as with a panic attack. People with this kind of anxiety would describe themselves as “worriers”. This type of anxiety is a normal reaction to stressful events, but if it persists for longer than 6 months, then your anxiety is problematic.
2. Panic and Agoraphobia
Panic is a sudden awareness of intense fear, which is disabling. There are profound physical reactions such as palpitations, excessive sweating, dry mouth and hyperventilation. This is extremely uncomfortable and distressing, and people who experience these symptoms go to great lengths to avoid situations where this could occur, especially where they feel escape would be difficult such as in a busy shopping mall. This typical avoidance leads to what is referred to as agoraphobia, which is an unnatural and acquired fear of going into crowded spaces or even leaving home.
3. Phobias
A phobia is an intense fear of something. Some fears are normal, such as the fear of a snake. When the fear leads to excessive avoidance to the point where your life becomes dysfunctional, then this is seen to be irrational, hence phobic. Fundamental to phobias is avoidance behaviour which indirectly feeds the fear. A common yet debilitating phobia is social phobia. This is an extreme fear of being amongst people. Fundamental to this fear is the fear of being scrutinised or negatively evaluated by others.
4. Post-traumatic stress disorder
This is a stress reaction to a severe event. This could include natural disasters, war, automobile accidents, armed robberies, to name only a few. The symptoms you could experience include the following:
- re-experiencing of the event, such as through nightmares and/or flashbacks
- avoidance of any situation that could remind you of the event
- heightened arousal, where you startle easily or where you struggle to concentrate. You may also be very agitated
- depression and feeling of helplessness, and loss of control and confidence
5. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OSD)
Obsessions are thoughts that keep popping into your mind and cause you to feel anxious. When you attempt to neutralise this anxiety by acting upon the obsession, you become compulsive. Once again, many people have slight or moderate obsessive compulsive traits but when it interferes with your daily life it becomes problematic e.g. when you can’t get to work on time because you keep checking things.
MANAGEMENT AND TREATMENT OF ANXIETY
Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) has been demonstrated to work best in the treatment of anxiety. CBT aims to reduce anxiety by teaching people how to identify, understand, control and change or modify their negative thoughts and subsequent behaviours. This is not necessarily difficult but requires persistence. Your CBT therapist will expect of you to practise and to be persistent, because it takes a while for new methods and strategies to become automatic.
The management of anxiety varies from person to person, but generally your CBT treatment plan could include the following:
- Breathing exercises and relaxation training
- Identifying negative thoughts
- Modifying negative thoughts through various therapeutic techniques including imagery and/or visualisation and role play