Anxiety

One of the most common mental health issues addressed by healthcare providers is anxiety.  At its core, anxiety is an overactive fear response.  It is perceiving something as more threatening than it is.  Anxiety takes many forms, for some people it is a fear of being judged by others, for others it is a specific fear/phobia (i.e. fear of heights, flying, etc), and for a lot of people it is what mental health professionals call “generalized.”  Generalized anxiety is an overall feeling of worry about anything and everything, not necessarily connected to one single theme. 

 Anxiety on its own is a natural human emotion, just like sadness.  It helps us avoid dangerous things or be more careful when we need to be.  Like most mental illness, it starts to become a diagnosable disorder when that same natural fear response is disproportionate to any actual threat, and the response itself starts to negatively impact functioning. Sometimes people with anxiety have difficulty leaving their homes, being in public, socializing with others, or even being able to fully wind down and enjoy themselves when they should.

 Anxiety can be caused by a number of things including a history of trauma, an unhelpful view of the world that you inherit from your environment, the role models you had growing up, etc.  It can also come from biological causes including our genetics, interactions with medicines, or medical conditions.  Often it’s both.  Because of this, the treatment for anxiety usually requires both therapy and medicines.  The medicines that help anxiety often overlap with the ones that address depression, which suggests to a potential chemical relationship between the two.  They typically include medicines you take daily, but can also include medicines you take on an “as-needed” basis.

 Anxiety disorders are a very treatable mental health issue and, like most issues in mental health, only require that you get started and trust the process.  For those that do, significant progress can be on the other side.