Types of Anxieties and Therapeutic Approaches

Anxiety can present itself in obvious ways or could be inconspicuous.

First, learning about the types of anxiety disorders is necessary to understand the best therapeutic approach to treat anxiety.What is the ‘normal’ level of anxiety? Feeling anxious is normal and could be necessary to get things done on time, prepare for significant life events to your best capacity, and even know how to interact with new people. However, anxiety all the time could mean you may have an anxiety disorder. You may feel distressed or it could impair daily life. If this is so, you may have an anxiety disorder.

It may be classified into one of the following disorders but could present itself in one or more of the following possibilities. Remember, anxiety is on a spectrum and can be mild, moderate, or severe*.

1. General Anxiety Disorder (GAD): GAD is defined by the excessive worry and rumination about daily life events. It is normal to feelanxious occasionally. For example, you may have a big game tomorrow and are feeling nervous. However, worrying about things that are not normally considered stressful is GAD. The best treatment for GAD is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which incorporates changes in thoughts and behaviors to reduce dailyanxiety and combat GAD altogether. CBT is a very flexible treatment that can be done at your convenience.

2. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD): OCD is divided into obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are recurring, uncontrollable thoughts while compulsions are the uncontrollable actions that often result from obsessions. Someone with OCD can have either obsessions, compulsions, or both. If you find yourself doing repetitive tasks or thinking about the same thoughts over and over, you may have OCD. People with OCD are aware of these obsessions and compulsions but feel helpless. They are usually time-consuming and impairing. The best treatments for OCD are usually with SSRIs (a type of medication) or with CBT that is focussed on exposure and response prevention (ERP). ERP exposes clients to thoughts to make them challenge thoughts and realize that they are not harmful.

3. Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia: Panic disorder is outlined by recurrent, unexpected panic attacks. A panic attack is a mix of physiological symptoms that may feel close to a heart attack accompanied by racing thoughts. To reduce symptoms, someone may avoid situations in which they think trigger panic attacks. A common example of this is agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is the fear of the outdoors, which triggers panic attacks. People with agoraphobia avoid going outside to reduce their panic attacks. Similar behavior is seen in people with other triggers of panic attacks. The best treatment is CBT with a focus on exposure therapy which subjects clients to their fears to rationalize their worries.

4. Social Anxiety Disorder: Social anxiety disorder is characterized by the fear of social interactions. It differs from agoraphobia since it is to do with people interaction whereas agoraphobia is to do with outdoors or places apart from comfort areas. The best treatment is CBT with a focus on exposure therapy.

5. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and acute stress disorder: PTSD and acute stress disorder result from a specific event that is a stressor (subjective to the individual). PTSD has to persist longer than 4 weeks with symptoms of hypervigilance, intrusion of thoughts, negative effects on mood, and avoidance of related situations to the stressor. If symptoms are present for less than four weeks it is known as acute stress disorder. The best therapy is CBT with a focus on exposure therapies.

6. Specific Phobias: You may have a specific phobia if you experience these symptoms. A specific phobia is a reaction to something with unreasonable/irrational fear paired with distress and avoidance of the fear-provoking situation. Phobias come in all shapes and forms, but the most common categories are animal type, natural environment type (water, heights, etc), situational type (elevators, transportation, etc), and blood-injection injury type. Agoraphobia is a type of phobia as well. The best treatment for phobias is exposure therapy with a focus on systematic desensitization which is the gradual exposure to the fear until fear is extinguished or reduced substantially.

* You need to be diagnosed by a licensed professional before claiming you have any of these disorders. This page is just for knowledge!