{"id":152065,"date":"2024-02-03T15:28:48","date_gmt":"2024-02-03T15:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/152065"},"modified":"2024-02-04T20:35:11","modified_gmt":"2024-02-05T01:35:11","slug":"understanding-anxiety-a-psychiatrist-explains-symptoms-medication-options-and-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/152065","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Anxiety – A Psychiatrist Explains Symptoms, Medication Options and Therapy"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/A9wwZmBGKiU?si=8BPiz3oiFYY6PUiY\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe>\r\n\r\nFear is\r\nsomething that everybody experiences. We all have fear,\r\nand fear is a normal response to a threat. The difference with anxiety\r\nis that anxiety is more diffuse. It’s not specific to a threat. It’s more global and it’s more vague and general. A fear of elevators\r\ncould be rational if you know that the elevator\r\nreached the maximum capacity or you know for sure\r\nthat it’s been failing or is shaking strangely, that\u2019s rational, and avoiding that is normal. But anxiety would be for someone\r\nto be afraid of elevators, even though it’s a perfectly functioning\r\nelevator you know has been recently installed and checked and\r\ntechnically is flawless, and you still have anxiety about that. Anxiety disorders are a large family\r\nwith several individual disorders, but it’s important to know\r\nthat sometimes they happen together or you may have one\r\nand a little bit of another one.\r\n\r\nBut the most common are panic\r\ndisorder, social anxiety disorder, we have also generalized anxiety\r\ndisorder, separation anxiety disorder, and the last one is selective mutism. It’s a rare disorder\r\nthat is mostly seen in children. In psychiatry,\r\nprobably the most successful group of illnesses or disorders\r\nthat we can treat successfully are anxiety disorders.\r\nThe treatment of choice is therapy. Multiple therapies are\u00a0validated by research that can be effective. In addition to that,\r\nwe can use medications that are just as needed,\r\nfor example, panic attacks. Many people use a type of medication\r\ncalled benzodiazepine. There’s a family of anti-anxiety medications. They can work for someone\r\nwho has only sporadic attacks, but not for someone who has chronic,\r\nwhat is called generalized anxiety disorder, because it’s easy\r\nto become dependent on those medications. The other mainstay type of treatment\r\nin terms of medications is antidepressants, specifically the so-called serotonergic\r\nantidepressants.\r\n\r\nSome of them, for example,\r\nare sertraline or paroxetine and these medications\r\nincrease the transmission of serotonin in the brain and can alleviate\r\nsome of the symptoms of anxiety. When we are\r\nthinking of treatment for anxiety disorders without medication,\r\nwe have therapy, but also we have self-help. So we can do a lot with self-help. Probably the most effective\r\nare all kinds of activities that tend to reduce the activation of the stress response system in the body. So the stress response system releases\r\nseveral chemicals, like cortisol and adrenaline,\r\nbut also changes the heart rate, breathing, and so forth. And so there are many activities,\r\nincluding meditation, yoga, tai chi, and sports in general,\r\naerobic exercise, that can down-regulate the activation of the stress\r\nresponse system. In addition to self-help, another type of non-medication,\r\nnon-pharmacological treatment for anxiety disorders\r\nis therapy. Counseling. And several types are\u00a0specific for anxiety and they’re being developed through\r\nresearch and they are highly effective.\r\n\r\nOne of the most common and most well-known is cognitive behavioral therapy,\r\nwhich is a systematic training of the patient to identify certain thoughts and beliefs\r\nthat can be challenged, and the challenge\r\nof switching reframing, and changing those thoughts can alleviate anxiety. The main coping skill for anxiety\r\nis avoidance. Unfortunately, avoidance\r\nis the worst thing that we can do because it will perpetrate\r\nand make it chronic. The more we avoid something,\r\nthe more powerful that fear becomes, or that anxiety. Therefore,\r\none of the treatments for anxiety is to try not to avoid\r\nthe triggers, is to expose ourselves as much as we can tolerate that. For example,\r\nif public speaking is a source of anxiety, some of us can get trained\r\nand go to Toastmasters,\r\nand go to a setting where we feel safer and slowly\r\nand progressively expose ourselves.\r\n\r\nBecause the brain learns not to react. With more practice, we lose that fear. If you believe\r\nthat you have an anxiety disorder, I would say the first thing to do\r\ncould be a screening for that. That could be done by your primary care\r\nphysician or yourself. One of the most common tools to screen for anxiety disorder\r\nis called General Anxiety Disorder-7. GAD-7. And that’s widely available\r\nin the public domain on the Internet.\r\n\r\nAnd if you have a suspicion\r\nof an anxiety disorder, I would go to your primary care doctor. Alternatively, you can go to a therapist\r\nbecause this, can be very effective and the therapist would be prepared\r\nto tell you, \u201cI think you need medication in addition to therapy.\u201d.\r\n\r\n<center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/b?_encoding=UTF8&amp;tag=3sss3-20&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;linkId=e9b113b7be64ea1832997bb5c717e582&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;node=283155\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">100 Hot Books<\/a><\/center><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/b?_encoding=UTF8&amp;tag=3sss3-20&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;linkId=5f7f04b68b05d11ccfcb2df607b0af04&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;node=565108\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Computers Laptops<\/a><\/center><center><\/center><center><a href=\"https:\/\/jvz4.com\/c\/335985\/319641\">Explaindio Agency Edition<\/a> FREE Training How to Create Explainer Videos &amp; SELL or RENT them! Join this FREE webinar | Work Less &amp; Earn More With <a href=\"https:\/\/jvz4.com\/c\/335985\/319641\">Explaindio AGENCY EDITION<\/a><\/center><a href=\"https:\/\/jvz4.com\/c\/335985\/319641\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ibb.co\/HNmg3Ln\/OIP-48.jpg\" alt=\"OIP-48\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fear is something that everybody experiences. We all have fear, and fear is a normal response to a threat. The difference with anxiety is that anxiety is more diffuse. It’s not specific to a threat. It’s more global and it’s more vague and general. A fear of elevators could be rational if you know that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/152065\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Understanding Anxiety – A Psychiatrist Explains Symptoms, Medication Options and Therapy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1013,"featured_media":152071,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[138,781],"tags":[43426,696,37008,53295,40505,41202,35259,39729,61232,61231,37009,55974,37010,61234,40501,37921,39587,61235,42081,37583,40498,61233,43420,43422,43424,53181,40502,37920],"class_list":["post-152065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-crime-justice","tag-academic-medicine","tag-anxiety","tag-anxiety-disorders","tag-ativan","tag-benzodiazepine","tag-benzos","tag-cbt","tag-cognitive-behavioral-therapy","tag-gad-7","tag-general-anxiety-disorder-7","tag-generalized-anxiety-disorder","tag-medication-for-anxiety","tag-panic-disorder","tag-paroxetine","tag-paxil","tag-prozac","tag-psychiatrist","tag-selective-mutism","tag-separation-anxiety","tag-separation-anxiety-disorder","tag-sertraline","tag-therapy-for-anxiety","tag-uc-davis","tag-uc-davis-health","tag-uc-davis-medical-center","tag-valium","tag-xanax","tag-zoloft"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/152065_maxresdefault.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1013"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152065"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152110,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152065\/revisions\/152110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}