Everyone feels anxious occasionally, and that is natural. Though, the real concern is when that anxiety is prolonged. Perhaps, constant anxiety can intervene in the quality of living your life. Hence, creating a negative reflection on your behaviour. Moreover, leading to serious physical health issues.
The effects of chronic anxiety on your body:
- A lingering sense of doom. Thus, leading to difficulties in focusing
- Anxiety can cause panic attacks, inclusive of chest pain, light-headedness, and a fastened heartbeat
- Constant stress and worry lead to a headache
- Increase the overall feeling of irritability
- Constant anxiety can result in depression
- It can fluctuate your breathing pattern and cause breathing problems
- Anxiety affects mental health but also causes physical pains, such as muscle pain
- It can increase blood pressure levels
- Anxiety makes you feel exhausted throughout the day, with extreme fatigue
- Can cause sleeping problems, resulting in insomnia
These are some of the side effects of anxiety on an individual. However, short term anxiety is normal in life, as it just increases the heart rate and breathing. For example, the feeling you get before meeting the job interviewer. Thus, it is an indication of preparation to face an intense situation.
However, the greater the intensity, the higher the risk of having an anxiety disorder. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIHM), women are more prone to experience anxiety disorder than men.
What are the various types of anxiety disorders?
Social anxiety disorder
This disorder makes an individual live with the fear of being judged or humiliated by others. Thus, the paralysing fear of social gatherings can leave one with social phobia. Hence, resulting in them being alone most of the time.
PTSD
PTSD- Post-traumatic stress disorder emerges after experiencing or observing a traumatizing incident.For example, it could be wars, natural destruction, or a physical attack- like a sexual assault case. This condition can be triggered without warning.A post traumatic stress disorder psychologist treats patients using three kinds of psychological therapy.
- CBT- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
- EMDR- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
- Group Therapy
OCD
The obsessive-Compulsive disorder makes individuals want to perform certain actions or rituals over and over again. In another scenario, a person with OCD experiences disturbing and undesired thoughts that can be highly distressing.
Type of general compulsions include:
- Frequent hand-washing
- Counting
- Checking something repeatedly
- Type of general obsessions include:
- Maintaining extra cleanliness
- Aggressive and destructive impulses
- Need for symmetry- just has to be right
Phobias
Anxiety limits an individual, thus, negatively resulting in introducing fears. Fear of heights and fear of closed space are common types of phobias.
Panic Attacks
As mentioned above, chronic anxiety can cause panic disorders. The uncontrollable feelings of anxiety, approaching doom, and threatening terror emerge without warning, anywhere, at any time. Thus, an attack! It can also cause shortness of breath and pain in the chest. However, one can experience another disorder along with a panic attack.
In general, an anxiety disorder messes up with one’s lifestyle. Therefore, it is necessary to treat it in its early stages.
