Anxiety Disorders Everything You Need to Know

Introduction As a family physician, I am privileged to spend my working days treating illness and trying to relieve suffering and pain. Often, thanks to the efficacy of modern medicine, that's not a difficult task. At my disposal I have antibiotics for infections, analgesics for pain and a vast collection of other drugs and treatments for almost any symptom of physical illness you can imagine. Give me a symptom and I can quickly and adeptly begin to help relieve suffering. On most days, and for most medical difficulties, mine is a very rewarding job. Sometimes, though, it's just not that simple. With problems such as anxiety disorders, the underlying difficulties that produce pain and suffering are not transparently evident, obvious or accessible. They are much more difficult to conceptualize, and they take a great deal of time and effort to understand. Healing is not a simple process. Of course, we are all anxious, we all worry, we are all "stressed out." The ability to worry, to anticipate negative consequences or events, is a remarkable human ability. Because it allows us to visualize what might happen in the future, it allows us to begin to prepare for such eventualities. In that sense, anxiety and worry are adaptive and protective; for most of us, anxiety is a good thing -- an evolutionary system that makes our lives better. Unfortunately, for almost a quarter of us, the experience of anxiety is different. Instead of being helpful and accommodating, anxiety becomes intensely uncomfortable and disabling. Although we use the same word -- anxiety -- it is important to understand that the experience is different from the normal in two important dimensions. The experience of abnormal anxiety -- the feeling associated with it -- is much more intense than that of normal anxiety. Far from being helpful or protecting, abnormal anxiety disrupts the usual activities and delights of life -- it disables. The combination of these two qualities produces the extreme suffering and pain seen with these disorders, and prevents the normal enjoyment of life. That's what this book is about. These problems are difficult to visualize and to understand. It is often impossible to identify their specific causes (why this happens to one particular person at this particular time), and they are very complicated, often occurring with other psychological difficulties. Although they are hard to conceptualize, the pain and disability they produce are every bit as real as those of easily visible physical illnesses. They cannot be "seen" in the same way that a fractured bone might be, but they are not imagined or fabricated. The suffering that they produce is excruciating in its severity and prolonged in its duration, often lasting a lifetime. The book is organized into the several common patterns of anxiety disorders. Generalized anxiety disorder is a pattern of excessive worrying over simple everyday occurrences and events. Social anxiety disorder (sometimes called social phobia) is a common problem of anxiety related to your perception of how you are assessed by others in a social environment. Panic disorder is a pattern of recurring episodes of extreme acute anxiety (the panic attack) and the changes that these make in your behavior. Phobias are severe unreasonable fear reactions to everyday objects or situations. Post traumatic stress disorder is a collection of anxiety symptoms related to a previous emotionally damaging event. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a combination of disturbing intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and their responses (compulsions) performed in order to reduce anxiety. Anxiety disorders in children have their own particular characteristics. The definitions of these patterns of anxiety disorders might seem quite finite, but many similar symptoms and experiences are shared among tCaldwell, Paul is the author of 'Anxiety Disorders Everything You Need to Know', published 2005 under ISBN 9781552978740 and ISBN 1552978745.