Have you ever felt overwhelmed or anxious?
This is a normal response that occurs from time to time in response to a negative and stressful situation. You may experience these feelings at some point in your life.
But if you are feeling anxious on a consistent basis, you are having a difficult time controlling this worry, and it is impacting your functioning, an anxiety disorder may be the possible cause.
These disorders are quite common and considerably on the rise in Canada. In fact, a recent study found that the prevalence of anxiety disorders in Canadians aged 15 years and older doubled from 2012 to 2022.
Moreover, there are many different types of anxiety disorders that one may develop.
Each of these may have different symptoms and present differently.
If you are experiencing the symptoms of an anxiety disorder, there is help available. You can see a Canadian anxiety therapist for support.
Read on to discover more about what anxiety is, when anxiety becomes an anxiety disorder, the types, and strategies to cope when you are feeling distressed.
What Is Anxiety?
Anxiety, sometimes referred to as stress, is the reaction we may experience when we go through a stressful event.
Think of how you feel when preparing for an important test or interview. You may feel fear about what may happen.
Your heart may race, you may sweat, or your thoughts may race through your mind.
During these situations, this anxiety is natural and can even be used as a natural protective mechanism.
These protective mechanisms may encourage you to take action.
In the case of the test or interview, it may get you to start studying or preparing for the test or interview so you can improve your chances of doing well.
These feelings will dissipate once the stressful situation disappears, and they shouldn’t interfere with your day-to-day functioning.
When Does Anxiety Become An Anxiety Disorder?
Anxiety disorders are one of the many types of mental health conditions.
Along with feelings of dread and nervousness, you may experience racing thoughts, heart palpitations, nausea, difficulty concentrating, and muscle tension, among other symptoms.
These are all similar symptoms to what everyone experiences during anxiety, but an anxiety disorder differs from anxiety in some key areas.
Firstly, anxiety should dissipate after a stressful event or situation, but an anxiety disorder can make you experience anxiety on a consistent basis.
This worry also becomes out of proportion to the situation or is not age-appropriate.
In addition, when you’ve got a clinical anxiety disorder, the anxiety interferes with your day-to-day functioning, which is not the case if you are experiencing non-clinical anxiety.
Lastly, in order to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, you may need to experience the symptoms for a specific time period before being diagnosed.
These symptoms don’t usually go away on their own and require support.
You can seek out support in the form of individual therapy, family therapy, or couples therapy, depending on your needs.
What is the Prevalence of Anxiety Disorders?
Surpassing depressive disorders, anxiety disorders are the most common type of mental health disorder across the globe.
In 2019, around 301 million people worldwide had an anxiety disorder. This amounts to about 4% of the global population.
This prevalence varies, though, depending on which country you live in.
For instance, Statistics Canada's Mental Health and Access to Care Survey suggests the following about anxiety disorders in Canada:
5.2% of the Canadian population aged 15 and older have an anxiety disorder as of 2022.
The number of people with an anxiety disorder has doubled in Canada from 2012 to 2022.
This means that about 1.9 million adult Canadians experienced an anxiety disorder in 2022, based on our population size of around 38,000,000 at that time.
Other studies have found that anxiety disorders are most prevalent among young women aged 15 to 24.
These gender differences could be due to a variety of reasons, including gender-based hormonal differences or the stigma surrounding men’s mental health.
What Does An Anxiety Disorder Feel Like?
Everyone who is experiencing an anxiety disorder will differ in the symptoms they experience.
When most people refer to an anxiety disorder, they are usually referring to generalized anxiety disorder, so the focus will be on this for this section.
Some common symptoms of an anxiety disorder include:
Feelings of fear or uneasiness
Being irritable
Uncontrollable thoughts
Restlessness
Difficulty concentrating
Shortness of breath
Heart palpitations
Muscle aches
Weight loss or weight gain
Changes in appetite
Sleep issues
Nausea
The severity of these symptoms and the combination of symptoms will vary from person to person.
If these symptoms you are experiencing are due to an anxiety disorder, you will experience a number of them.
The worry will also be out of proportion to the situation, and it will impair your functioning.
Types of Anxiety Disorders
There are seven different types of anxiety we will be discussing today, which include:
Generalized anxiety disorder
Social anxiety disorder
Agoraphobia
Panic disorder
Selective mutism
Specific phobias
Separation anxiety disorder
The symptoms and causes of each of these anxiety disorders vary.
Generalized anxiety disorder
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is what most people refer to when they think of clinical anxiety.
This type of anxiety disorder occurs when you experience persistent, excessive worry that interferes with your daily functioning and ability to carry out your daily activities.
Everyday activities, such as job responsibilities, are typically the things people with GAD are worried about.
This worry occurs along with several other cognitive, mental, and physical symptoms listed under the “What Does an Anxiety Disorder Feel Like?” section of the blog you are currently reading.
These symptoms need to continue for a minimum of six months and impact your functioning for GAD to be diagnosed.
Social Anxiety Disorder
This is a form of anxiety that occurs when you experience persistent feelings of anxiety surrounding social interactions and situations where you can experience humiliation or rejection.
A person with social anxiety disorder will often go to extreme lengths to avoid social situations where this could occur. .
Along with your feelings of anxiety, you may avoid:
Eating in public
Large open spaces
Speaking to new people
Public speaking
This avoidance behavior may cause the anxiety to get even worse over time.
If you experience this fear for more than six months and it interferes with your ability to attend to social situations, you may be diagnosed with social anxiety disorder.
Agoraphobia
Agoraphobia occurs when you have a fear of going to places where you cannot escape or where you can’t get help if they experience panic.
This fear also needs to occur in at least two of the following situations:
Public transition
Standing in line or in a crowd
Being in enclosed spaces
Being outside the home
Being in open spaces
Sometimes the fear is so strong that you cannot leave your house at all.
You may avoid the situation or need a companion to get through the situation.
For a diagnosis, this fear typically needs to occur for more than six months.
It also needs to be intensely upsetting or interfere with functioning.
Panic Disorder
A panic attack is a form of intense anxiety that involves a combination of physiological and psychological symptoms.
The symptoms include:
Heart palpitations
Chest pain
Shortness of breath
Chills or hot flashes
Numbness
Sweating
Sweating
Feeling dizzy or lightheaded
Choking feelings
Nausea
Abdominal pain
Feeling detached
Fear of losing control
Fear of dying
You may describe these panic attacks as feeling like you are having a heart attack.
These attacks can occur in response to a triggering situation and be expected, or they may occur out of the blue without any warning.
When you experience consistent panic attacks and have a fear that these attacks will occur in the future, you may have panic disorder.
Selective Mutism
This is a type of anxiety disorder that typically starts around age 5 but may not be recognized until school.
Children with selective mutism usually will not speak in specific situations while speaking in other situations.
Other common symptoms include expressive shyness, high social anxiety, and fear of embarrassment.
Due to a lack of speech or limited speech, children may use non-verbal forms of communication to communicate.
Still, the reduction in speech may negatively interfere with academic performance or home life.
If these symptoms are disrupting your child’s life, therapy may be able to provide support.
Specific Phobias
A phobia is a fear of a non-harmful person, place, or thing that is excessive and persistent in nature.
Some common phobias include:
Spiders
Flying
Public speaking
The fear is usually so strong that it causes you to completely avoid what you fear.
Separation Anxiety Disorder
Physical symptoms of separation anxiety disorder usually occur in childhood but can persist until adulthood.
This anxiety disorder occurs when you've an excessive fear of being separated from their attachment figure.
Other common symptoms and feelings include:
Persistent fears of losing the attachment figure
Being reluctant to sleep away from the person
Nightmares about separation from this attachment figure
This fear needs to be out of proportion to your developmental age.
It also needs to occur for at least 4 weeks in children and at least 6 months in adults to be diagnosed.
Ways to Cope with Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety does not have a universal, one-size-fits-all treatment.
The treatment plan for each individual will vary based on their needs. Therapy can take place virtually or in person.
Distress Tolerance Strategies
Distress tolerance involves an individual's ability to handle or manage emotional stress.
If you have a larger tolerance, you are able to tolerate more emotional distress and cope with the situation using distress tolerance techniques.
There are a variety of ways in which you can manage distress and build your distress tolerance skills.
Some of these methods include:
Look at the colours in your environment.
Splash cold water on your face.
Hold an ice cube.
Eat a sour candy
Light a candle
Meditation
Guided imagery
Watch funny videos.
You can also use the acronym TIPP, which can be broken down into:
Temperature: change your temperature by adding something hot or cold. This could include an ice pack or a heating pad.
Intense Exercise: Exercise for about 10 minutes to increase your heart rate, release calming neurotransmitters, and bring yourself to a state of calm.
Paced Breathing: Breathe in and out for 3 seconds each until you feel calm.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Tighten and relax each muscle group until you feel calm.
Check out these 160 coping strategies for mental health to learn other ways to cope.
Lifestyle Changes
You all can engage in lifestyle changes to support you in coping with anxiety.
These lifestyle changes involve changes you make to care for your body by participating in healthy activities and eliminating unhealthy activities.
Some lifestyle changes include:
Getting enough sleep
Staying active
Eating a balanced diet
Avoiding alcohol and caffeine
Quitting cigarettes if you smoke
An Anxiety Therapist
A Canadian anxiety therapist at Bee Kind Counselling can support you with your anxiety disorder using a variety of therapy modalities.
Various therapy modalities teach different techniques for managing anxiety.
Dialectical behavioral therapy typically focuses on accepting yourself while simultaneously recognizing that you need to change unhealthy habits.
There are several acronyms used in DBT for managing anxiety. One of them is ACCEPTS, which mentions various techniques to build your tolerance for distress.
Another therapy modality, cognitive-behavioral therapy, involves working with your therapist to change cognitive distortions, or negative thinking patterns.
Lastly, some anxiety disorders may benefit from exposure therapy, which involves gradually exposing you to the thing that is feared.
For instance, if you fear public speaking, you may be exposed to gradually more difficult public speaking events with more and more people at each event.
But regardless of what therapy modality is used, the goal of therapy for anxiety is to manage your anxiety symptoms so that you can live a fulfilled life.
Your initial therapy consultation will go over what modalities and methods may be used to fit your goals in the future.
The therapist may also support you in managing symptoms of other frequently concurrent conditions, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or depression.
Book a Free Consultation with Bee Kind Counselling
Are you reading this blog and thinking that you may be experiencing one of the most common types of anxiety disorders?
Bee Kind Counselling is well positioned to support you with their team of mental health professionals.
You can book a free 15-minute consultation with a Canadian anxiety therapist by emailing admin@beekindcounselling.com, calling 519-757-7842 ext. 1, or booking through the website below.
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