Anxiety Therapy Online

Anxiety can be a normal reaction to stressful situations (e.g., difficult conversations, unexpected life transitions, meeting new people, and public speaking). Worrying is a part of life. Anxiety and anxiety-related disorders are the most commonly diagnosed of all mental health disorders. Some of these include:

• Social Anxiety (aka social phobia) is characterized by significant anxiety or fear of embarrassment related to being judged negatively by others. A bit of social anxiety is completely normal (e.g. when asking a potential romantic partner out on a date or giving a presentation). Social anxiety becomes a disorder when it causes significant distress, persistent avoidance, or impairment in your life.

• Panic Disorder and Anxiety Attacks include symptoms like chest pain, nausea, racing heart, sweating, chills or hot flashes, difficulty breathing, trembling shaking, and numbness in fingers or toes (among other symptoms). Not everyone who experiences a panic attack (more intense) or an anxiety attack (less intense) goes on to develop a formal panic disorder.

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is characterized by persistent worry and anxiety about a wide variety of things. It is important to note that everyday worry is normal. There is also such a thing as healthy anxiety. To qualify for a diagnosis of GAD, the worry must be out of proportion to your actual stressors. Some common symptoms of GAD include the inability to unhook or let go of fear and worry, impairment in concentrating, extreme indecisiveness, trouble sleeping, fatigue, sweating, irritability, and nausea.

• Phobias are intense, irrational fears of specific objects (e.g., blood, needles) or situations (e.g., eating in front of others or extreme fear of throwing up [i.e., emetophobia]). People with phobias may go to great lengths to avoid the things they are afraid of, which can then interfere with their daily life and relationships.

• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is characterized by intrusive thoughts (i.e., obsessions) and repetitive behaviors (i.e., compulsions). People with OCD may have unwanted obsessive or intrusive thoughts about things being dirty, sexual, violent, and taboo behaviors or they may feel an overwhelming need to arrange objects in a certain way. Lesser known forms of OCD include sexual orientation OCD, suicidal/self-harm OCD, aggressive OCD, relationship OCD, and pedophilia OCD even when there is no desire to engage in these behaviors. They may also engage in compulsive behaviors such as excessive hand washing or checking locks multiple times to the point where these behaviors cause significant impairment in day-to-day functioning. Unofficially, sometimes obsessive thoughts without a corresponding compulsion are referred to as “Pure O.”

Excessive fear, worry and subsequent avoidance can severely get in the way of living your life. So, how do we treat anxiety? Many of these forms of anxiety can be treated with therapy, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and exposure and response prevention, which can help individuals learn to manage their obsessive thoughts and reduce their compulsive behaviors.