Anxiety becomes a disorder or a mental problem if it starts to rule your life and affect your responses to different stimuli. The most dangerous thing about anxiety is that there is no way of knowing that you already have a problem unless the anxiety becomes so ingrained into you that it becomes chronic. Early intervention is needed, but intervention through therapy or self help practices is only possible as soon as you recognize that you have a problem.
Do you think you might have an anxiety problem? Here are some of the more familiar types of anxiety disorders that you may have encountered.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder – This type of disorder is often the least treated and the most difficult to diagnose among the different types of anxiety disorders. Some people even poke fun at the individuals showing symptoms of what could be generalized anxiety disorder. These people are known as the worry warts among us, and they do tend to worry about everything and anything.
The main stumbling block for treatment may be the inability to explain where the anxiety is coming from. The intensity of the feeling varies, depending on which aspect of a person’s life is concerned: finances, family or employment. But the worry and fretting persists regardless of the status of the problem.
Social Anxiety Disorder – The term social anxiety refers to the way an individual reacts in the presence of strangers and acquaintances. This is a specific type of anxiety that can be detected easily because of the behavior of the individual in a group. Most of the time, an individual suffering from social anxiety can be around people but still feel alone. This kind of anxiety may or may not be rooted in the way the person has been treated by others in the past.
Test Anxiety – Common among students and those that are pressured to take examinations for the sake of their careers. Test anxiety refers to the feeling of helplessness when the thought of taking the examination crops up. The dread or the sinking feeling of defeat may come before, during or after the examination.
Performance Anxiety – In its simplest form, performance anxiety can translate to ‘getting nervous to perform’. Many athletes and artists succumb to the pressure to deliver a good performance and inevitably fail to do so. Performance anxiety could persist through the next time a person is pressured to do well in any task.
Public Speaking Anxiety – This kind of anxiety disorder can be very specific. If a person is asked to address an audience, he freezes up and can’t do so. The fear of public speaking has a lot to do with being apprehensive about the reception of the audience.
These types of anxiety disorders are plaguing more people than you know. You may even encounter them yourself, or you’re already suffering from one or two types. The first step is learning more about these types and coming up with a solution for your anxiety.
