Acute Anxiety and How to Handle It Efficiently (2023)

An occasional feeling of unease is normal. However, people with anxiety disorders frequently suffer intense, excessive, and persistent concern and fear over everyday situations. Recurrent acute anxiety, fear, or terror episodes that reach their height in a couple of minutes are symptoms of several anxiety disorders (panic attacks).

Daily tasks are hampered by this unsettling, challenging-to-control, disproportionate to the actual threat and prolonged feelings of concern and panic. You could stay away from particular situations or locations to stop these feelings.

There are a variety of anxiety disorders:

• Agoraphobia is a form of anxiety in which a person avoids places or circumstances that can make them feel constrained, helpless, or embarrassed.
• Anxiety disorders brought on by medical illnesses include intense anxiety or panic attacks that can be linked to a physical health problem.
• The symptoms of a generalized anxiety disorder include persistent and excessive anxiety as well as worry and anxiety regarding regular or everyday occurrences. The worry is out of proportion to the circumstances, difficult to control, and affects how you physically feel. It frequently co-occurs with anxiety disorders like depression.
• Panic disorder: Signs of this condition include recurrent bouts of abrupt, intense anxiety, fear, or terror that reach their peak severity in minutes (panic attacks). Possible indicators of impending disaster include shortness of breath, chest pain, or a rapid, fluttering, or hammering heartbeat (heart palpitations). These panic attacks may lead to worries that they'll happen again or a wish to avoid situations where they've occurred.
• Selective mutism: is the inability of children to talk in some contexts, like school, despite their ability to do so in others, including at home with their immediate relatives. This may affect how you operate at work, school, and in your social life.
• Separation anxiety disorder is a childhood condition marked by excessive anxiety for the child's developmental stage and anxiety brought on by separation from parents or other people who perform parental responsibilities.
• Social anxiety disorder (social phobia) is characterized by intense anxiety, fear, and avoidance of social situations. These symptoms are brought on by embarrassment, self-consciousness, and concern that others will judge or consider them negatively.
• Phobias: Major anxiety when exposed to a particular object or scenario and a desire to avoid it are characteristics of certain phobias. Some people experience panic episodes due to phobias.
• Substance-induced anxiety: Intense anxiety or panic symptoms that are a direct result of drug abuse, prescription use, toxic substance exposure, or drug withdrawal are the hallmarks of substance-induced anxiety disorder.

The terms "other specified anxiety disorder" and "unspecified anxiety disorder" refer to phobias and anxieties that do not quite fit any other anxiety disorder definitions but are significant enough to be distressing and disruptive.

Causes of anxiety: The origins of anxiety disorders are yet unknown. Existing anxiety sufferers appear more prone to anxiety disorders when confronted with challenging circumstances. Inheritable traits may also be important.

Chemical imbalance: Prolonged or intense stress can change the balance of chemicals in your body that controls your mood. An anxiety disorder may appear if you experience high levels of stress over an extended period.

Environmental factors: Having a traumatic experience might set off an anxiety condition, especially in people who were already predisposed to it genetically.

Hereditary factor: Anxiety disorders frequently run in families due to heredity. Like eye color, they may be inherited from one or both parents.

Healthcare causes: An underlying medical condition may be connected to anxiety in certain persons. Sometimes the first warning signals of a medical condition are anxiety-related signs and symptoms. Your doctor may request tests to look for symptoms of a problem if they have reason to believe your worry may have a medical cause. Examples of health issues that anxiety has been connected to include: Heart conditions, Diabetes, thyroid conditions like hyperthyroidism

Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are respiratory disorders.

• Misuse of drugs or withdrawal from them as well as alcohol abstinence
• Withdrawal from benzodiazepines, alcohol, or other anxiety medications
• Constant or irritable bowel syndrome
• uncommon tumor that secrete certain hormones that facilitate flight or combat

Certain drugs occasionally have the adverse effect of anxiousness. Your worry might be brought on by an underlying medical issue if: You don't have any blood relatives who suffer from anxiety disorders (like a parent or sibling).

You didn't grow up with an anxiety illness. Because of your anxiousness, you don't avoid particular situations or objects. You experience abrupt anxiety that doesn't seem to be tied to current events, and you have no prior history of anxiety.

What signs indicate an anxiety disorder?

Depending on the sort of anxiety condition you have, your symptoms will change. The following are general signs of an anxiety disorder: physiological signs, sweaty or chilly hands, arid mouth, palpitations in the heart, Nausea, tingling or numbness in the hands or feet, muscle tenseness, respiration difficulty.

Mental health issues: experiencing fear, panic, and unease, Nightmares, recurring memories or flashbacks of catastrophic events, intense, uncontrollable thoughts, behavioral signs, inability to remain quiet and steady, and difficulty sleeping.

Risk factors:These elements could make you more likely to acquire an anxiety disorder:

Trauma: Children who experienced abuse, trauma, or observed horrific events are more likely to develop an anxiety disorder.

Illness-related stress: When you have a major sickness or health condition, you may worry a lot about your future and treatment.

Escalation of stress: Excessive anxiety may be brought on by a major incident or a pile of lesser stressful life circumstances, such as a loss in the family, work stress, or persistent financial worry.

Other mental illnesses: Anxiety disorders frequently co-occur with other mental health illnesses, such as depression, in many people.

Alcohol or drug: Anxiety can be caused or worsened by the misuse, abuse, or usage of drugs or alcohol.

Complications:

You worry more than only when you have an anxiety issue. Additionally, it may cause, aggravate, or worsen the following physical and mental conditions: Other mental health conditions, such as depression (which frequently coexists with an anxiety disorder), abuse of substances, difficulty sleeping (insomnia), issues with the stomach or bowels, headaches and ongoing discomfort, social exclusion, functioning poorly at job or school, a low standard of living and Suicide.

How are anxiety problems treated in psychotherapy?

You can deal with your emotional reaction to the sickness with psychotherapy or counseling. A mental health professional explains techniques to help you comprehend and manage the disease better. Methods include:

The most popular kind of psychotherapy for anxiety problems is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT for anxiety allows you to identify the mental processes and actions that result in unsettling emotions. Then, you go to work modifying them. The goal of exposure treatment is to address the concerns that underlie the anxiety condition. It enables you to interact with things or circumstances you might have been avoiding. Your doctor may also recommend relaxation techniques and guided visualization along with exposure therapy. Negative thought patterns feed the negative emotions of worry and terror in people with anxiety disorders. Recognizing and changing these unfavorable thoughts and beliefs is the aim of cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety. The theory goes that you may alter your feelings by altering your thoughts.

The cost and difficulty of meeting in person can be avoided by accessing support online. Being in a familiar, comfortable setting can make discussing your problems easier. Online counseling can be as beneficial as conventional, in-person therapy for many anxiety sufferers.

Thought challenging, sometimes called cognitive restructuring, is a technique where you challenge the unhelpful thought patterns that fuel your worry and swap them out with more constructive, realistic ideas. There are three steps in this.

1. Recognizing the negative thoughts you have: Situations are viewed as more threatening than they actually are when an individual has an anxiety condition. Shaking another person's hand, for instance, can seem dangerous to someone who fears germs. Although it may be clear that this is an unreasonable worry, it might be challenging to recognize your own irrational, frightening ideas. Asking yourself what you thought when you first felt worried is one tactic. You'll get assistance with this from your therapist.
   
2. Putting up a fight against your negative ideas: Your therapist will show you how to assess your anxiety-inducing ideas in the second phase. This entails examining harmful beliefs, challenging scary thoughts' supporting facts, and determining whether bad predictions come true. Conducting tests, assessing the benefits and drawbacks of worrying about or avoiding the thing you fear, and estimating the likelihood that it will occur is all techniques for combating negative thinking.
   
3. Replacing unfavorable thoughts with sensible ones: You may replace your worried ideas with new ones that are more accurate and uplifting once you've recognized the unreasonable forecasts and negative distortions they include. Your therapist could also assist you in developing practical, calming mantras you can repeat to yourself whenever you are confronted with or anticipating an event that typically makes you anxious.

Conclusion:

Telehealth, which is centered in the patient's home and involves sending data on biometric variables (such as blood pressure or oxygen levels) to a data processing center for evaluation, followed by a period of time during which a health professional contacts the patient by phone or email if more information is required.You can contact a licensed therapist or psychiatrist through the @onlinedoc consultancy to receive expert guidance on your path to mental wellness.