Types Of Anxiety Disorders And Their Characteristics
Feeling anxious is a normal emotional response. Whether just before an exam, due to a conflict at work, or just before making an important decision, anxious symptoms can manifest. In fact, In uncertain or stressful situations it is normal to experience this phenomenon.
However, when anxiety affects a person in a way that causes abnormal functioning in any area of their life (relationships with others, school, work, etc.), then we are talking about an anxiety disorder. .
In this article we will see what they are the different types of anxiety disordersits characteristics and symptoms.
What are anxiety disorders? As its name indicates, it is psychopathologies that are based on a dysfunctional way of regulating anxiety; The latter is not considered a mental health problem in itself in all the situations in which it occurs.
Individuals can experience anxiety differently, and while some suffer acute panic attacks from their catastrophic thoughts, others experience anxious symptoms in social situations.
Likewise, there are people who have excessive, irrational and persistent worry and anxiety. Anxiety disorders They cause a lot of suffering to the person who suffers from themand it is one of the most frequent reasons for consultation in psychological therapy.
Anxiety is a condition that causes both physical and psychological symptoms, and affects millions of people around the world.
On the other hand, the symptoms of this pathology are classified into three groups:
Types of anxiety and their characteristics
Anxiety is a set of psychological and physiological elements that have their reason for being in biological evolution.
And in the vast majority of cases Anxiety is a useful coping mechanism to maximize our chances of survival.: allows us to react in time to the first signs that something is not going well in our environment, or that opportunities are appearing that we should not miss.
Thus, anxiety is not synonymous with a psychological disorder. However, like everything in nature, an element that represents evolutionary advantages in many cases, can give rise to significant problems if certain circumstances occur, just as occurs with organs that can develop diseases.
Therefore, the first distinction that we must consider to understand the types of anxiety is the following: pathological anxiety and non-pathological anxiety. Within the first category we find what is known as anxiety disorders.a set of psychological disorders based on anguish and anxiety.
Since people experience anxiety disorders in different ways, psychologists and psychiatrists have created categories for each of the different types of anxiety. The most important are the following.
In the following lines we will delve into each of these disorders and explain their characteristics.
1. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD is a fairly common anxiety disorder.. It is characterized because the person who suffers from it shows behaviors that may seem strange, something that happens in a wide variety of situations and without there needing to be a clear trigger for the discomfort they experience. That is, it is associated with diffuse anxiety, which tends to persist over time regardless of what is happening around the person.
In some cases, anxious thoughts can be beneficial to us, as they keep us alert. For example, there is nothing wrong with checking that the door to our house is closed before going to bed, so we can make sure that no one steals from us. The problem arises when, after having checked the doors and windows, we repeat the same behavior over and over again, because we think that if we don’t do it, something bad is going to happen to us.
This disorder is characterized by obsessive and compulsive behaviors. Obsessions refer to intrusive thoughts, ideas or images that cause worry and anxiety and that appear over and over again in the mind. Compulsions are actions taken to reduce the anxiety caused by obsessions.
For example, an obsession may be the following thought: “If we don’t turn the switch in the room on and off ten times in a row we are going to die.” Compulsion, on the other hand, is the act of turning lights on and off. Failure to perform compulsions causes great discomfort and a strong feeling of anxiety.
It must be taken into account that, although OCD has been classified many times within the category of anxiety disorders, According to other criteria, it is rather associated with impulse control disorders.s. In fact, it has been seen that those who present this psychological alteration tend to obtain higher scores in impulsivity, which indicates that their problem is not so much the tendency to seek perfectionism, but rather the inability to avoid carrying out compulsions.
2. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
PTSD occurs when an individual suffers a traumatic situation that has caused a strong emotional and stressful impact.. People with PTSD continually relive the event that triggered the disorder, for example, being a victim of rape or participating in a war.
If the emotional impact is very great, people’s discomfort can last for years, and some people need psychological support because they are unable to overcome it on their own.
In part, this type of anxiety disorder is based on emotional memory: Memories related to an experience are “stored” in the brain in a dysfunctional way, so that these images appear unexpectedly in the person’s consciousness with relative frequency, causing great discomfort.
Symptoms include:
On the other hand, it must be taken into account that in some explanatory models of mental health problems, there are different types of trauma, and in some of them dissociation is the predominant aspect, and not so much anxiety.
3. Panic disorder
Panic disorder is characterized by the person suffering from it having feelings that they are going to die imminently and that they are short of breath.. They are sensations that the person perceives as very real even though he is aware that they are not the product of reason, which causes intense fear and, consequently, great discomfort.
In serious cases the patient even has to be hospitalized. It can be one of the most disabling anxiety disorders.
Symptoms are highly debilitating and include:
4. Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Many people experience anxiety at certain moments: when they are going to play an important basketball game, before an exam, or when they are going to meet a girl they love for the first time. However, Individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) feel worry or anxiety most of the timefor several months, and not only in situations that can cause stress.
In GAD, worries are persistent (occurring half the days for at least six months), intense, irrational, and interfere with the normal functioning of some area of the affected person’s life. For example, work, friends or family.
In this way, the anxiety linked to Generalized Anxiety Disorder is based on a feeling of diffuse discomfort, which does not arise in a specific context or with a specific stimulus. Psychological therapy is essential to combat this psychological alteration, and since the way they express themselves is very variable and changes depending on the characteristics of each patient, having the personalized attention of a professional who follows up on the case is very important; There is little point in trying to apply what has worked for others (something that happens in all psychological disorders in general, but is especially true in this one).
5. Social phobia
It is common to think that shyness and social phobia are the same, but in reality they are not.. Social phobia is a serious disorder, and people who suffer from it feel so bad in social situations that they are unable to control their fear and anxiety, which is why they often avoid these types of situations.
Feeling shy about speaking in public is normal, but when that fear and anxiety interrupt the normal functioning of the individual’s life, it becomes a severe problem. People with social phobia can avoid all types of social situations, for example, going to eat at a restaurant, because they live with a great fear of being judged or observed.
Thus, this is one of the types of anxiety disorders that most affect personal relationships, something that not only generates a feeling of isolation and unwanted loneliness, but also has implications on the material conditions of life of the person: having less access to others means having less support and help.
6. Agoraphobia
Agoraphobia is the irrational fear of not being able to count on the help of others in a moment of emergency.. Therefore, it frequently occurs when the person is in public spaces and open places, such as parks or streets. But public spaces are not the root of the problem, but rather the possibility of suffering a panic attack and being unprotected in these places.
In other words, in this anxiety disorder the anticipation of crises plays a very important role, and exerts a “self-fulfilling prophecy” effect. This influence of catastrophic predictions on what can happen occurs in all anxiety disorders, but in this one it plays a leading role.
People with agoraphobia do not want to leave their homes and avoid traveling anywhere other than their home and office. In many cases, people who suffer from agoraphobia also suffer from panic attacks or PTSD.
7. Specific phobias
Phobias are irrational fears of a specific stimulus.for example, a situation, an object, a place or a living being of a certain species. Therefore, when a person suffers from this disorder he does everything possible to avoid that situation or object that causes anxiety and discomfort.
There are different types of phobias, for example, arachnophobia (phobia of spiders) or coulrophobia (fear of clowns). This is because these types of anxiety disorders take as many forms as different concepts the human mind creates, and from these concepts phobias of certain natural or social phenomena are created. Some of them really curious; You can discover them in the article: “The 15 strangest phobias that exist.”
How are these psychological alterations treated?
Mental health interventions applied to anxiety disorders are of two main types: those related to psychiatry and pharmacology, and those related to psychotherapy.
1. From psychiatry
Anxiolytics are the most used resources in psychiatry to help those who have developed anxiety disorders. These psychotropic drugs usually help control symptoms, but in most cases they do not put an end to these psychological alterations. On the other hand, their side effects can have very harmful consequences, so it is very important to always follow the doctor’s instructions both when consuming them and when stopping their consumption.
2. From psychological therapy
From psychotherapy there are several methods and techniques that have been proven effective in overcoming anxiety disorders, and that have to do with helping the person to modify both their behaviors when relating to the environment and with others, on the one hand, and their way of interpreting reality and managing their feelings, on the other.
Among them, systematic desensitization and controlled exposure stand out.in which the patient is induced to a certain level of anxiety and at the same time they are guided and trained to apply emotional management measures in real time. Sometimes, Virtual Reality is used to enhance its effects. Psychoeducation and cognitive restructuring are also used to help the patient free himself from dysfunctional beliefs about his own identity, about life, and about what he can and cannot do to be happy.
Luckily, psychotherapy has proven to be very effective in helping people overcome anxiety disorders, and allows us to intervene at their origin. This, added to the fact that this type of psychopathology is very common, means that many psychologists specialize through postgraduate courses and courses on anxiety disorders. In any case, there is still much to research and understand about this interesting area of mental health and its possible treatments.
