Anxiety

Experiencing anxiety, worry, and fears are a natural and adaptive part of life and childhood development. However, people with clinical anxiety disorders frequently experience intense, excessive and persistent worry about day-to-day life situations causing notable distress or impairment. Often their worried thoughts feel out of control or unmanageable and are disproportionate to the situation or event.

These are often the symptoms of anxiety:

● Nervousness, restlessness or feeling tense

● Feelings of danger, panic or dread

● Rapid breathing or hyperventilation

● Increased or heavy sweating

● Trembling or muscle twitching

● Weakness or feeling “sluggish”

● Difficulty focusing or thinking clearly about anything except worried thoughts

● Insomnia

● Obsessions about certain ideas, a sign of obsessive-compulsive disorder

● Worry and fear surrounding a particular life event or past experience (a sign of post-traumatic stress disorder)

 

For most people with a diagnosis of anxiety disorder who require treatment, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), a serotonergic antidepressant, or both, have been most widely studied and shown to be efficacious treatments.