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Social Anxiety Disorder – What Is It?

Social Anxiety Disorder

Many people are nervous when meeting new people, or speaking in public. There are very few people that actually enjoy the idea of speaking in front of a crowd, whether for work or your best friend’s wedding. This is a typical response of mild anxiety that in some ways helps you as it can let you know how important it is and motivates you to prepare and practice. This is not Social Anxiety Disorder.

Social Anxiety Disorder, also called Social Phobia, is debilitating anxiety that reaches a point where it interferes with daily life and actively prevents a person from doing normal day-to-day things, like taking the bus, speaking when called on in class, or talking to their boss. This anxiety disorder will keep a person home from work, they will avoid going out, and will work actively to minimize any social contact they have.

Although the causes are not clear, the experience is generally similar for most people with this disorder. They are extremely fearful of standing out and being judged. They have a negative view of themselves, are certain they will be viewed negatively and receive some type of punishment for it. They feel like they are on the spot, or on display at all times, and people are always watching them and judging them. From all this they will actively avoid social situations as much as possible.

What the anxiety feels like and how they respond to it similar to other anxiety disorders, but there are some symptoms specific to this particular disorder. The  signs and symptoms of social anxiety can include:

  • Blushing, sweating, or trembling
  • Rapid heart rate
  • Mind goes blank, leaving you unable to respond to others
  • Feel nauseous or sick to the stomach
  • Rigid body posture
  • Make little eye contact
  • Speak with an overly soft voice
  • Find it scary and difficult to be with other people, especially those they don’t already know, and have a hard time talking to them even though they wish they could
  • Very self-conscious in front of other people and feel embarrassed and awkward
  • Very afraid that other people will judge them
  • Stay away from places where there are other people
  • Anxious or fearful when thinking of, or discussing, social situations
  • Desire to stay as “invisible” as possible in social situations

It’s easy to see there are some more standard signs of anxiety in there, like worry, stomach reactions, rapid heartbeat, but there are also more specific responses like the meekness, the desire to become invisible in social situations, and always feeling in the spotlight. This is a painful experience over and above simple shyness.

This illness limits some of the basic human needs, hindering work, and cutting a person off from friends and family. It is painful, but it can be treated. Reaching out for help is the first step, and as with the other anxiety disorders, the sooner treated, the better the prognosis.  Social anxiety disorder can be effectively treated by mental health professionals such as a therapist, psychiatrist, or online counselor.

An online counselor maybe the best solution for a person suffering with social anxiety. Online therapy programs allow a person to communicate with a professional from the comfort of home, without the need to travel, or deal with a busy office.

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Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this post and any associated articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect opinions or policies of eTherapyPro. These posts and articles are shared for your enjoyment and consideration. Read them or not at your sole discretion and liability. They are not intended to replace counseling services rendered by licensed professionals. Consult with your counselor before implementing any content from these articles into your life.

Environmental Causes of Anxiety

Environmental Causes of Anxiety

Environmental Causes of Anxiety: Your environment is everything around you, with which you may, or may not interact. That’s a very broad definition, because the environment is basically everything outside of you. It includes not just nature, and the biological, but the social as well. And all of it can cause stress and contribute to anxiety.

Anxiety and anxiety-based disorders are very similar in symptomology and in their function; they exist to help keep a person safe from harm and to manage the fight/flight/or freeze stress reaction. Anxiety disorders exist when the feeling and physical reaction are so severe or chronic that they interfere with day to day living.

Common Environmental Causes of Anxiety

The causes of anxiety and anxiety disorders can vary but will fall into either the genetic or environmental categories. Looking at the environmental causes, the biological are some of the most controllable. Psychotropic substances, or substances which affect an individual’s thought and emotional states, are some of the more common causes of anxiety. Of these substances, caffeine would be the most common.

Caffeine is a stimulant that speeds up the nervous system, and can cause racing thoughts, difficulty concentrating, rapid heartbeat and shallow breathing among other things. It is highly correlated with anxiety and can either cause anxious or nervous feelings and behaviors or exacerbate already existing anxiety problems. Other drugs can cause similar symptoms, with methamphetamines as one example.

Probably the most common environmental source of anxiety are events that happen in everyone’s life. Situations that involve loss, or sudden and unexpected change often bring about anxiety. For example, finding out your parents are getting a divorce can be shocking and a sudden change, that can elicit tremendous anxiety in children. Getting fired from work, as another example, will bring out vast amounts of stress and uncertainty about the future. The key here is that suddenly the future is uncertain, and what was thought was normal and planned out, is now a big unknown.

Traumas also cause a lot of damage, chief among this is anxiety. Trauma is known to create many different symptoms, mainly those that are anxiety-based. Post-traumatic stress disorder highlights this, with hyper-vigilance, intrusive thoughts, and general anxiety. It is like a wound in the mind, and it forces the person to keep going, acting like the attack or damage is going to come again and again. It is draining to keep going at that rate to say the least.

Anxiety comes from many different sources, but it looks very similar from each source. The key is that anxiety is treatable, no matter what causes it. A combination of medication, education, and talk therapy can be helpful in lessening the severity of it or eliminating it altogether. Help is out there from a variety of mental health professionals.  Many individuals have found success with a counselor from an online therapy service. These services are much more convenient than face to face appointments, and can be much less expensive.

 

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Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this post and any associated articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect opinions or policies of eTherapyPro. These posts and articles are shared for your enjoyment and consideration. Read them or not at your sole discretion and liability. They are not intended to replace counseling services rendered by licensed professionals. Consult with your counselor before implementing any content from these articles into your life.

Coping Strategies for Living with an Anxiety Disorder

Coping Strategies for Living with an Anxiety Disorder

Anxiety can be a nightmare for some to deal with, especially people who have to deal with it every day of their lives. Chronic anxiety, living with it every day, can be torturous, but it is treatable. Reaching out for help would be the first step to getting this under control. While you are going through the process of therapy to treat your specific anxiety disorder, here are some ways to try to manage the day to day, when the anxiety disorder seems out of control.

Break things down in to what you can do for your body, what you can do for your mind, and what actions you can take to help yourself out that day. Looking at what you can do for your body, adopting some healthy lifestyle traits will go a long way towards alleviating anxiety and improving your mood as well.

Tips to help your body (to get rid of anxiety disorder) includes:

  • Limit or cut out alcohol and caffeine from your diet
  • Try to get the recommended 7-9 hours of sleep per night
  • Eat regularly, and eat well-balanced meals
  • Set up regular exercise, for at least thirty minutes a day
  • Take frequent breaks from what you are doing

These may not seem like much, but anxiety can be intensified when you are, tired, stressed, or intoxicated. By doing this you will take care of your health and lower your anxiety disorder.

Caring for your mind to lower anxiety is a little more complicated. A lot of work can and should be done in talk therapy to help manage these conditions, but here are some tips to help alleviate some anxiety when it happens:

  • Ask yourself if this is something worth getting upset over
  • Ask yourself if this is something that will matter a year from now
  • Learn to accept what you cannot control instead of letting it consume you
  • Learn what you can and cannot control
  • Develop a strong sense of humor
  • Meditation and keeping yourself focused on the present

These are simple steps that may actually take a lot of practice but will go a very long way in the quest to rid yourself of anxiety.

Now, taking action is another thing that will help, especially when it is action aimed at fighting anxiety disorder, both being proactive and reactive. These can include:

  • Slow, deep breathing or some thoughtful breathing technique
  • Learning distraction techniques, like listening to music, reading, or talking to friends when you are upset
  • Set goals for yourself every day, ones that are attainable
  • Learn what triggers your anxiety and avoid it until you are strong enough to manage it

Coping skills to combat daily anxiety disorder are a necessary tool in living with it. There are things to do that will overall help lower anxiety, as well as things to do in the moment when the anxiety is getting bad. These will help in conjunction with any medication and talk therapy you are doing to eliminate chronic anxiety from your life.

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Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this post and any associated articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect opinions or policies of eTherapyPro. These posts and articles are shared for your enjoyment and consideration. Read them or not at your sole discretion and liability. They are not intended to replace counseling services rendered by licensed professionals. Consult with your counselor before implementing any content from these articles into your life.

Learning About Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: You have to wash your hands again. You have no choice. If you don’t, something awful will happen. Absolutely terrifying. Just wash them one more time then you are safe. Just one more time. Again. And another time. Again.

This may sound like fiction, but it is the truth for the many people living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). OCD is an anxiety-based disorder where there are intrusive thoughts in the person’s mind that cause tremendous worry and anxiety. Those thoughts somehow become calmed or at least minimized when the person performs some specific action, like hand washing, checking the stove, walking around the house checking doors and windows. And this action will have to be repeated many times, dozens of times, maybe hundreds of times. It is possible that a person with a hand washing compulsion will wash their hands so many times they become raw and start to bleed.

It’s hard to say what the origin of OCD is, but likely the person has an anxiety disorder to begin with, and somehow the anxiety at one point became lessened after the person did a certain action. They learned then that after they do a certain thing, it gets better. The anxiety gets worse, so they keep doing the behavior more and more, and in some ways it becomes like an addiction, where they need to do this repetition just to get the same results.

Obsessions are repeated thoughts, urges, or mental images that cause anxiety. Common symptoms include:

  • Fear of germs or contamination
  • Unwanted forbidden or taboo thoughts involving sex, religion, and harm
  • Aggressive thoughts towards others or self
  • Having things symmetrical or in a perfect order

Compulsions are repetitive behaviors that a person with OCD feels the urge to do in response to an obsessive thought. Common compulsions include:

  • Excessive cleaning and/or hand-washing
  • Ordering and arranging things in a particular, precise way
  • Repeatedly checking on things, such as repeatedly checking to see if the door is locked or that the oven is off
  • Compulsive counting

Not all rituals or habits are compulsions. Everyone double checks things sometimes. But a person with OCD generally:

  • Can’t control his or her thoughts or behaviors, even when those thoughts or behaviors are recognized as excessive
  • Spends at least 1 hour a day on these thoughts or behaviors
  • Doesn’t get pleasure when performing the behaviors or rituals, but may feel brief relief from the anxiety the thoughts cause
  • Experiences significant problems in their daily life due to these thoughts or behaviors

OCD like the rest of the anxiety disorders can be managed and eventually overcome with help. Also like the other anxiety disorders, this is best treated sooner rather than later, as it gives a much better prognosis, and in the end, less time spent suffering with this illness.

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Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this post and any associated articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect opinions or policies of eTherapyPro. These posts and articles are shared for your enjoyment and consideration. Read them or not at your sole discretion and liability. They are not intended to replace counseling services rendered by licensed professionals. Consult with your counselor before implementing any content from these articles into your life.

Genetic Causes of Anxiety

Anxiety and anxiety disorders cause a lot of suffering, and often for no clear reason. Anxiety comes from worry and stress over things the brain has identified as a potential threat, even if they are completely illogical. Take for example, triskaidekaphobia, or fear of Friday the 13th. It’s not reasonable to be afraid of a date, but people still suffer from this disorder and a couple times a year will be in a panic over a date.

What we have learned is that anxiety comes from both environmental and genetic factors. The environment is everything outside of the self, both things found in nature, and normal human events, like divorce or job loss. The genetic factors, however, are encoded in our DNA, and increase the likelihood of any one of us suffering from a crippling anxiety disorder.

Genetics will increase the likelihood of certain outcomes.  For example a person’s genes will have a lot of influence over their height. This does not mean, however, that their genes will solely determine how tall a person will be; their environment impacts how their traits will develop from their genes. Staying with the example of a person’s height, if a person grows up very poor and does not get enough of the right nutrients, or barely gets food at all, this severely impacts the body’s growth potential, making that person shorter than someone who gets proper nutrition, even though both their genes may be coded to be tall.

The same is true for anxiety. Looking at specific anxiety disorders, like Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), or panic disorder, evidence strongly suggests that there is a genetic link to them. What has been shown is that anxiety disorders have a strong correlation to run in families, giving evidence to it being genetic. Looking at twins that have been raised apart, the twins are equally likely to suffer from an anxiety-based condition, making it less likely that it is a learned or environmental factor, if they grew up in different environments. Although the genetic markers are not clear yet, researchers are working to find them in order to help understand anxiety and its origins better.

Whether it is environmental or genetic, what is true about anxiety is that it can be managed and eliminated with the right form of treatment. If you or someone you care about are struggling with anxiety, and it is beginning to impact your life, please reach out for help. The sooner you seek help, the sooner relief will come, and the easier it will be to treat the anxiety.

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Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this post and any associated articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect opinions or policies of eTherapyPro. These posts and articles are shared for your enjoyment and consideration. Read them or not at your sole discretion and liability. They are not intended to replace counseling services rendered by licensed professionals. Consult with your counselor before implementing any content from these articles into your life.