Anxiety Services

What is 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. It helps us avoid or be more careful in situations where avoidance or being careful is necessary. Like most mental illnesses, it starts to become a diagnosable disorder when that same natural fear response is disproportionate to any actual threat and the subsequent avoidance or carefulness itself affects everyday 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. It makes sense, then, that it is not uncommon for folks with anxiety to often develop depression as well, as they can no longer enjoy things the way they could previously.

Anxiety can be caused by a number of things including a history of trauma, an unhelpful view of the world, the role models we 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 therapy, but may or may not require medicines. The types of therapy that are often most helpful are ones that encourage experiencing anxiety, understanding it, and developing ways of gaining some sense of control over it. That control can look like a coping skill that helps decrease the intensity of the anxiety, or it can look like an activity that temporarily distracts us, which helps us realize our anxiety has a limit and we can “wait it out” with a distraction. The medicines that help anxiety often overlap with the ones that address depression, which suggests a potential chemical relationship between the two. They can include ones that you take daily and ones you take on an “as-needed” basis or as a last resort for anxiety flare-ups.

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.

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