Fear is a functional emotion that helps us survive. In threatening situations, this natural reaction helps you avoid potential danger. But what if the fear doesn't stop?
Living with an anxiety disorder
Every year, one in eight Dutch people struggle with an anxiety disorder. This mental disorder is among the three most common psychological complaints. But what exactly does it mean to live with an anxiety disorder?
Everyone is afraid or anxious about something from time to time. In fact, fear also has a protective and useful function. For example, fear warns of danger and puts you on edge in certain situations. However, it happens that anxiety symptoms persist for a long time and have a negative impact on your daily life. There may be so much anxiety, often accompanied by avoidance behavior, that normal functioning in society becomes difficult. We then speak of an anxiety disorder or phobia.
How does an anxiety disorder develop?
Imagine experiencing a severe earthquake. Being afraid in that case is a very normal reaction. Your heart starts beating faster, you start sweating and you start breathing faster. All these signals have a functional role to warn you of the danger.
When you are anxious, your body automatically produces dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). This puts your body in a state of readiness and allows you to react quickly in a potentially dangerous situation with a 'fight, flight or freeze' response. With an anxiety disorder, this natural "fear response" in your brain is disrupted. This disruption causes you to receive fear signals without engaging in a dangerous situation.
The causes of anxiety disorder
The causes of an anxiety disorder vary from person to person and can also vary by type of anxiety disorder. In most cases, there is a combination of hereditary vulnerability, your personality and experiencing one or more traumatic events.
Aptitude & personality
Your genetic predisposition may cause you to develop an anxiety disorder more quickly than someone else. For example, a compulsive disorder or social phobia is sometimes more common in a family. Your personality can also make you more susceptible to developing anxiety symptoms. For example, if you are naturally easily anxious or gloomy, this can increase your risk of developing an anxiety disorder.
Anxiety & trauma
An anxiety disorder can also result from experiencing one or more traumatic events or prolonged stressful situations. For example, neglect, abuse, sexual abuse, loneliness or lack of a social support system.
Anxiety disorder due to somatic disorder
Another cause may be that your anxiety circuitry is out of balance. For example, you then produce too many or too few substances (neurotransmitters) in your brain that influence your fear signals. As a result, you may automatically experience more stress and anxiety in your daily life or react more violently in certain situations.
Recognizing an anxiety disorder
Depending on the type of phobia, there may be different types of symptoms. The most common symptoms are:
- Dizziness
- Paralysis
- Tingling
- Palpitations
- Sweating
- Restlessness
- Insomnia
- Compulsive thoughts or actions
- Avoidance behaviors
Panic disorder (and agoraphobia)
People with panic disorder are afraid of losing control of themselves. The symptoms associated with panic, such as palpitations, sweating, trembling, nausea or dizziness, lead to thoughts such as the idea of fainting, dying or going crazy. Panic attacks often come unexpectedly and anticipatory anxiety, fear of the fear, develops. Some people, fearing panic attacks, start avoiding situations in which they fear the attacks might occur. Familiar situations are queues at the checkout, crowded rooms, the escalator, a place in the middle of the theater, in short, situations in which one fears not being able to leave if panic occurs. When one starts avoiding these situations, we speak of agoraphobia (literally: agoraphobia).
Social phobia
A person with a social phobia experiences anxiety in a social situation, in which one is especially afraid of being judged critically or negatively by others. This includes, for example, the fear of exhibiting certain behaviors (blushing, stuttering, trembling), of blundering or of not being liked. As a result, people with social phobia tend to flee or avoid these situations. People with fear of failure usually prefer not to focus attention on themselves because of a lack of self-confidence. Fear of failure or extreme shyness can often be traced to social phobia. The avoidance behavior can go so far that it interferes with daily functioning. Then we speak of a social phobia.
Compulsive disorder (obsessive-compulsive disorder | OCS)
Obsessive-compulsive disorder, or compulsive disorder, is the urge to constantly repeat certain actions and thoughts. Obsessions (compulsions) often involve negative thoughts. In content, compulsive thoughts often involve contamination with disease or dirt, making mistakes with disastrous consequences, one's own aggressive behavior, unwanted sexual thoughts and blasphemy. These thoughts, impulses or representations are ignored, suppressed or neutralized with other thoughts or actions (compulsions). Well-known examples of compulsions are control compulsions, cleaning (fear of blemish) and ordering or maintaining symmetry.
Generalized anxiety disorder (brooding disorder)
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAS) is accompanied by physical symptoms of tension such as restlessness and a hunted, nervous feeling. Central to this is the constant worrying about a variety of daily issues. For example, someone with generalized anxiety disorder worries about finances when there are no money problems at all. In fact, anything can be cause for worry: illness, accident, death, work, doing the shopping, vacation, you name it. That's why GAS is also called a worry disorder.
Hypochondria
A hypochondriac has a very strong and great fear of getting or having a disease. This fear is not real, but the fear of illness is difficult to eliminate. Despite reassurance from a doctor and extensive medical examinations, a person with hypochondria remains anxious and fearful. Hypochondria, like other anxiety disorders, can lead to avoidance behavior, or conversely, to excessive checking of the body and constantly seeking reassurance from others.
Single phobia or specific phobia
A single phobia is a focused fear of certain things, animals or situations. The fear may be accompanied by intense physical symptoms and feelings of panic. The person in question usually knows full well that their fear is not real, but the fear wins out over common sense. Common phobias include fear of heights, fear of flying, claustrophobia, fear of the dentist, spiders and mice. A single phobia is almost always accompanied by avoidance behavior, or the situation is endured with great fear.
Anxiety disorder treatment U-center
Often an anxiety disorder does not come alone, but there are other psychological conditions and underlying causes that keep your symptoms going. We therefore work from an integrated approach, in which we include everything that affects your life. In an intensive program in our treatment center, we do everything we can to help you, so that you can make progress in a short period of time and get a grip on your fears.
Primarily, treatment for an anxiety disorder focuses on coping with anxiety symptoms and breaking through avoidance behaviors. During treatment, we also delve deeper into the underlying causes of your anxiety disorder. As with depression, we know that anxiety symptoms can return. This can happen under the influence of stress. It is therefore important to learn to recognize signs of this in time. With the help of a personal development plan, you learn to deal better and better with a possible vulnerability to anxiety symptoms.