Anxiety Disorders

We have all felt anxious at times in our lives, before an exam, when our child attends his first day of school, or when we have a review with our boss. Anxiety rouses us to action, preparing us to face a threatening situation.

Anxiety disorders, however, do the opposite. They can keep clients from coping, disrupting their daily life. An anxiety disorder may make clients feel anxious most of the time, without any apparent reason. The anxious feelings may be so uncomfortable that clients stop some everyday activities in order to avoid the anxiety. Clients may just have occasional bouts of intense anxiety that totally immobilize them. Frequently running in families, anxiety disorders are illnesses, often relating to the biological makeup and life experience of the individual.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is chronic and exaggerated worrying and tension, even though nothing seems to provoke it. Sufferers continually anticipate disaster; worry excessively about health, money, family, or work. Sometimes the source of the worry is hard to pinpoint. Simply the thought of getting through the day provokes anxiety.

Although sufferers of GAD generally realize that their anxiety is more intense than the situation warrants, they cannot overcome their fear. The worry is accompanied by physical symptoms, especially trembling, twitching, muscle tension, headaches, irritability, sweating, or hot flashes.

Depression often accompanies anxiety disorders and, when it does, needs to be treated. Psychotherapy is very effective for the feelings of sadness, apathy, and hopelessness, the changes in appetite or sleep, and the difficulty concentrating that often characterize depression.

Research has also shown that behavioural therapy and cognitive-behavioural therapy can be effective for treating several of the anxiety disorders.

Behavioural Therapy focuses on changing specific actions and uses several techniques to decrease or stop unwanted behaviour. For example, one technique trains clients in diaphragmatic breathing, a special breathing exercise involving slow, deep breaths to reduce anxiety.

Like Behavioural Therapy, Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy teaches Clients to react differently to the situations and bodily sensations that trigger panic attacks and other anxiety symptoms. Clients also learn to understand how their thinking patterns contribute to their symptoms and how to change their thoughts so that symptoms are less likely to occur. This awareness of thinking patterns is combined with exposure and other behavioural techniques to help people confront their feared situations.

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