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When to see doctor for anxiety


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When to See a Doctor for Anxiety

Everyone experiences anxiety. Whether it’s over a work deadline, a family dispute, or another temporary stressor, most anxieties resolve when the stressor is removed. But if you’re experiencing constant worry, fear, or stress that affects your day-to-day life, you may have an anxiety disorder. 

If you think you may have an anxiety disorder, you should reach out to your medical provider. Speaking with a medical provider can help identify treatments that relieve your anxiety. 

When to See a Doctor for Anxiety

It can be hard to know when to seek help for your anxiety. As a general rule of thumb, if your symptoms of anxiety occur consistently, are of high intensity, and/or impact your quality of life, you should reach out to a provider for help. If you have any of the following, you should also reach out to a provider:

  • Thoughts of self-harm
  • Inability to focus or perform well at work or school
  • Inability to stop thoughts of worry or fear
  • Family history of anxiety or mental health conditions
  • Recent pregnancy 

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It’s important to know what signs and symptoms may indicate an anxiety disorder. These symptoms can be either physical or emotional. They can also vary depending on the type of anxiety disorder.

Symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder include:

  • Feeling restless or on-edge
  • Difficulty sleeping (including difficulty falling or staying asleep)
  • Being easily fatigued
  • Difficulty concentrating
  • Irritability
  • Unexplained pains (including stomach pains and muscle aches)
  • Intrusive thoughts or worrying

Signs and symptoms of panic disorder include:

  • Pounding or racing heart
  • Sweating
  • Chest pain
  • Feeling of being out of control
  • Sense of impending doom
  • Trembling or tingling

Signs and symptoms of social anxiety disorder:

  • The feeling of self-consciousness or fear that people will judge you poorly
  • Blushing, sweating, or trembling
  • Pounding or racing heart
  • Stomach pain
  • Rigid body posture
  • Overly soft voice when speaking in front of others
  • Difficulty meeting new people

Signs and symptoms of phobia-related disorders:

  • Overwhelming fear or worry about encountering a specific object or situation
  • Taking specific steps to avoid encountering an object or situation
  • Immediate and intense anxiety that occurs when you encounter a feared object or situation

Types of Providers who Treat Anxiety Disorders

There are several types of providers who can treat anxiety disorders:

  • Primary care physician (PCP): Most PCPs are trained to identify and diagnose common mental health disorders. Many can also suggest and prescribe pharmacological treatment. A PCP can also often make a referral to a mental health specialist for counseling.
  • Psychiatrist: Psychiatrists are  medical doctors who specialize in the treatment of mental illness. They can provide both psychotherapies, or talk therapy, and prescription medication.
  • Psychologist: A psychologist is a mental health professional who specializes in talk therapy or counseling. In most states, a psychologist is unable to prescribe medicine.
  • Psychiatric nurse practitioner: A psychiatric nurse practitioner is trained to diagnose and treat mental health conditions. They can also prescribe medications.
  • Master’s-level mental health clinician: There are several types of masters-level clinicians trained to provide talk therapy or counseling. These clinicians may be Licensed Clinical Social Workers (LICSW), Marriage & Family Therapists (MFT), or Licensed Mental Health Counselors (LMHC) with a masters degree in clinical our counseling psychology.

Treatment Options

Most anxiety disorders are treated with talk therapy, medication, or a combination of both. It’s important to remember that it can take some time to find the right treatment strategy for you. When it comes to psychotherapy, it can take some time to find the right therapist or type of therapy that works for you. With medication, you may have to try a few different types before you find the one that works to resolve your symptoms.

Questions to Ask During Your Appointment

Making an appointment with your provider is the first step to getting help for your anxiety. peaking openly about your anxiety can be stressful though, especially if it’s your first time. Below are some questions you can ask your provider to help make the most of your appointment together: 

  • Do I have an anxiety disorder?: After sharing your symptoms and medical history, ask your provider whether they think you have an anxiety disorder. If they don’t think you have an anxiety disorder, ask them if there are other factors that could be causing your symptoms, including any medications you’re currently taking.
  • What treatment options are available?: If you’re interested in medication, ask your provider about their specific recommendations or if they can refer you to someone who can prescribe medication.
  • What side effects can I expect?: If you decide to try medication, be sure to ask your provider about possible side effects. It’s also important to tell them about any current medications you’re taking and whether or not you’re allergic to any types of medication.
  • What type of counseling do you recommend and why?: Common types of therapy used to treat anxiety include cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure. In some cases, mental health experts use a combination of different therapies to treat a patient.
  • How long will treatment last?: This isn’t always an easy question to answer, but it can help to give you an expectation of what’s ahead.

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Coping With Anxiety

Learning to cope with anxiety often requires a multifaceted approach. In addition to therapy and medication, there are certain lifestyle changes that can help to soothe your symptoms:

  • Know your triggers
  • Eat a well-balanced and nutritious diet
  • Get regular exercise
  • Prioritize regular, quality sleep

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Frequently Asked Questions

When should I go to a doctor for anxiety?

Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time. But if your anxiety interferes with your day-to-day life, it’s important to reach out to a provider for help.

What does a doctor do if you have anxiety?

There are two main treatment options a provider can recommend to treat your anxiety: psychotherapy (also called talk therapy) and medication. It’s not uncommon for healthcare professionals to treat people with anxiety using both talk therapy and medication.

What signs of anxiety do doctors look for?

When speaking with your provider about your anxiety, they may ask you questions about how your anxiety impacts your day-to-day life. They may also ask you some anxiety-related questions, such as if you’ve ever had thoughts of self-harm, impending doom, or uncontrollable feelings of fear or worry.

Should I talk to my doctor if I think I have anxiety?

It can be tough to know when to reach out to a provider for help with your anxiety. If you think your anxiety is affecting your quality of life or making it difficult to carry out or enjoy everyday tasks, it’s a good idea to reach out to your provider for help.

K Health articles are all written and reviewed by MDs, PhDs, NPs, or PharmDs and are for informational purposes only. This information does not constitute and should not be relied on for professional medical advice. Always talk to your doctor about the risks and benefits of any treatment.

K Health has strict sourcing guidelines and relies on peer-reviewed studies, academic research institutions, and medical associations. We avoid using tertiary references.

  • Anxiety Disorders. (2022).
    https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders

  • What are anxiety disorders? (2021).
    https://psychiatry.org/patients-families/anxiety-disorders/what-are-anxiety-disorders

treatment, how to get rid of anxiety, how to deal with anxiety for no reason

Anxiety is a negatively colored mood with feelings of worry, tension, and fear. In moderation, such emotions are useful: they help to mobilize forces and find a way out of extreme situations. But there must be grounds for concern, and normally it lasts a limited period of time.

If a person constantly experiences a feeling of anxiety and anxiety for no reason, this may indicate the presence of a mental disorder. In the absence of help, constant tension wears out the nervous system and the body as a whole, which leads to a breakdown in adaptation mechanisms and the development of chronic diseases.

If you notice that you cannot relax for a long time, then you should think about visiting a specialist.

In pathological cases, a state of anxiety and restlessness without a cause manifests itself both mentally and physically.

Mental symptoms:

  • constant feeling of fear and excitement for no reason,
  • poor concentration and attention,
  • sleep disorders,
  • emotional lability, irritability, tearfulness,
  • inability to relax and fully engage in daily activities or communication,
  • the need to reassure others that everything is okay. At the same time, words of support do not bring relief.

Physical symptoms:

  • rapid breathing and heartbeat,
  • headaches, pain in the abdomen and in the region of the heart,
  • excessive sweating,
  • eating disorders: increased or loss of appetite,
  • weakness,
  • shivering, chills,
  • stool disorders: frequent urge, constipation,
  • feeling short of breath,
  • nausea,
  • muscle spasms and pain.

Unreasonable anxiety and anxiety increase or smooth out from time to time. Exacerbations often accompany stress: conflicts, important events, illness. Normally, a person recovers quickly after the situation is resolved, but when upset, negative emotions do not go away.

The intensity of anxiety varies from mild to severe. The extreme is panic. If you ignore an anxiety state for a long time for no reason, then panic attacks can join it. They overtake unexpectedly and sometimes without a good enough reason, but after this episode, a person begins to avoid situations similar to the one in which it happened: public transport, an elevator, or just a crowd of people. This greatly reduces the quality of life and can lead to social isolation.

Causes of causeless anxiety and anxiety

The occurrence of anxiety disorder is influenced by heredity. It has been found that certain brain structures and features of biological processes play an important role in the emergence of fear and anxiety. Personal characteristics, somatic health problems, lifestyle and various types of addictions also matter. Sometimes there is no cause for causeless anxiety and worry. Negative feelings usually have a trigger - an event or thought that causes an anxious response. However, most people are not aware of their triggers and believe that their emotions are groundless. In this case, only a specialist will help to understand why excitement arises for no reason.

There are a number of diseases, the symptoms of which are constant anxiety. With causeless fear and anxiety, the reasons may be as follows:

  • Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Persistent nervousness and worry over small things that are usually visible to others and last 6 or more months. It starts in adolescence and intensifies with age.
  • Obsessive-compulsive disorder: obsessive thoughts and fears that are accompanied by obsessive actions that do not bring relief. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is distinguished - a person is indomitably haunted by memories that reproduce a traumatic situation.
  • Phobias: irrational fear of any, even mundane, things. Accompanied by uncontrolled panic and physical manifestations.
  • Panic attack - an excruciating and sudden attack of panic, which is accompanied by a fear of death and vivid somatic symptoms. The regular occurrence of panic attacks means the development of a panic disorder.
  • Post-traumatic stress disorder: occurs after a severe traumatic situation and is accompanied by high levels of anxiety, avoidance and flashbacks.

These are the most common examples, but pathological anxiety can be a symptom of other disorders or the result of a failed stress management. If you want to understand why there is a feeling of anxiety for no reason, you should consult a doctor. Without clarifying the main factor and working on it, it is impossible to restore health and peace of mind.

What to do with causeless anxiety and anxiety

It is difficult to live in constant stress. If you experience causeless anxiety and fear of what to do, the following list will tell you:

  1. Talk to someone you trust. This could be a relative, a close friend, a therapist, or a helpline employee. People are social creatures, so communication is a good way to relieve internal tension.
  2. Find a way to calm down quickly. There is not always a person with whom you can share. Therefore, it is important to find a suitable method that will help you relax: breathing techniques, soothing music, aromatherapy, self-massage, and more. If you cannot independently choose a technique that quickly helps with anxiety for no reason, a specialist will tell you what to do.
  3. Add physical activity to your life. It is a natural and effective remedy for anxiety. Moderate sport relieves stress, lowers stress hormones, and strengthens the nervous system. Get at least 30 minutes of physical exercise a day.
  4. Normalization of lifestyle. Get enough sleep, eat well, give up bad habits. This stabilizes physical performance and neurotransmitter levels, which helps maintain emotional balance.
  5. Start keeping a diary. Notes help identify patterns of anxiety flare-ups, understand the causes, and notice early signs of their occurrence. Also, thanks to this, you will begin to focus more on positive events that you might not have noticed before.

With excitement for no reason, everyone who regularly encounters this wants to know what to do. There is no universal method, however, the 5 steps listed above are recommended for every person with increased anxiety. This may be enough to alleviate symptoms. But if self-help techniques do not give the desired effect, then with a regularly occurring feeling of anxiety for no reason, you need to find out from a specialist what to do.

Treatment of causeless feelings of anxiety and restlessness

Regardless of the cause of pathological anxiety, professional help is the only complete method to eliminate the problem. If you have constant excitement and anxiety for no reason, you can quickly and effectively learn from a psychiatrist or psychotherapist how to get rid of this condition.

Due to the diversity of anxiety disorders, their therapy must be adapted to the individual clinical picture and diagnosis. Therefore, only a highly qualified specialist who has experience working with different types of anxiety conditions can tell you how to get rid of an anxiety state for no reason. For example, the therapy algorithm for a patient with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is different from the help for panic attacks.

For a state of anxiety and anxiety without a cause, treatment includes the following approaches:

  1. Psychotherapy. The most promising direction, which not only eliminates the symptom, but identifies the cause and fights it. Therapy teaches when feeling anxiety for no reason, how to get rid of acute attacks of anxiety, relax, look at life situations differently. The doctor will help to uncover the main causes of your fears and work them out. The patient receives the tools to overcome anxiety and uses them successfully. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is usually used: in the course of treatment, the patient encounters an object of concern and gradually gains confidence that he can control the situation.

  2. Medical therapy. Depending on the type of anxiety and the presence of associated mental or physical health problems, antidepressants, sedatives, sleeping pills, and other drugs may be prescribed. When anxiety is felt without a cause, drug treatment will alleviate the symptoms and improve the quality of life of the patient during his psychotherapeutic work on the underlying cause. Uncontrolled medication leads to dangerous side effects and withdrawal syndrome, so they can only be used according to the individual course prescribed by the doctor.

It is recommended to use a combination of psychotherapeutic and drug treatment, but sometimes only the first one is enough.

You should not put off visiting a doctor if you feel that experiences are preventing you from living. Over time, the symptoms worsen and other severe mental illnesses join: depression, neurotic disorders, and more. If the normalization of lifestyle does not help, it means that you will understand how to get rid of unreasonable anxiety only from a psychotherapist. With a timely appeal to a competent specialist, only a few sessions of psychotherapy may be enough for recovery.

Thanks to modern psychotherapeutic approaches, hundreds of people are making great strides every day in the fight against anxiety disorders. There is no need to endure the painful burden of fear and anxiety, because timely assistance allows you to achieve excellent results: the patient will fully recover and return to a full life, and the improvement will be noticeable after the first session.

Anxiety and anxiety. When to ask for help

Contents of the article:

  1. Anxiety and anxiety. Symptoms
  2. Causes of anxiety
  3. Who and when helps with increased anxiety

Anxiety, uneasiness and restlessness often manifest themselves in stressful situations. An adequate sense of anxiety in such cases only helps to cope with difficulties. What to do if such a state does not leave the mind alone and negatively affects life? When and how to spot the line between anxiety and an anxiety disorder?

Anxiety and anxiety.

Symptoms

It is important to understand that anxiety and anxiety are different things. It is common for a person to experience anxiety when life events provoke stress, and hence the feeling of fear, panic and anxiety. Why does the body allow such a state to develop? Such a reaction is the activation of the forces of our consciousness to overcome a stressful situation. And such a reaction is adequate for a person. It is short-lived, unstable and tends to be strong or weak depending on the situation.

Anxiety is an attempt by the body to cope with stress, therefore, as soon as the source of anxiety becomes irrelevant, the feeling of anxiety decreases or even disappears.

However, there is a condition that affects the body for a long time and requires auxiliary means to get rid of it. Anxiety, although it resembles anxiety, has a much stronger effect on a person. Consider the signs by which psychologists distinguish between the concept of "anxiety" and "anxiety". Anxiety is characterized by:

  • Inadequate body response . Unlike anxiety, anxiety becomes a big problem for a person due to obsessive thoughts, excessiveness and duration. Even when the subject of excitement ceases to be important, the anxiety state does not leave the mind alone, and it is more difficult to get rid of it.
  • Hypothetical reason. If during anxiety a person is able to clearly identify an object that causes certain emotions in him, then the origins of anxiety often lie outside reality. These are fantasies, inventing tragic developments of events, etc.
  • Violation of the comfort of life. Anxiety passes, and the person's condition is back to normal, he is able to communicate with people, complete tasks and calmly return to everyday life. The situation is different during a constant anxiety state. Consciousness is not able to be distracted from disturbing thoughts, so this causes a disruption in communication, concentration at work, pleasure from personal interests.

Based on this understanding of anxiety, the concept of anxiety disorder , which is one of the types of neuroses. Occurring due to disorders of the nervous system and constant stress, it becomes a problem that requires the intervention of a specialist.

Psychologists also refer to anxiety a number of diseases in which a constant state of anxiety is one of the symptoms:

  • generalized anxiety disorder;
  • phobias;
  • panic disorder;
  • social anxiety disorder;
  • post-traumatic stress disorder;
  • obsessive-compulsive disorder .

According to the statistics of people suffering from an anxiety disorder, about 12%. Although many in society impose some stigma on the discussion of mental problems, it is important to recognize the symptoms in time, which do not reflect simple anxiety, but are serious signs of pathology.

Constant anxiety causes severe harm to a person's condition. Anxiety and stress affect not only mental but also physical health.

Mental symptoms are expressed in:

  • impaired concentration and attention;
  • insomnia;
  • emotional instability;
  • constant unjustified feeling of fear for the future;
  • excessive control over behavior, own state;
  • inability to abstract from obsessive thoughts;
  • suspiciousness.

Symptoms that are expressed at the level of the physical state of the body:

  • rapid breathing and palpitations;
  • weakness, tremor, chills, muscle spasms;
  • headaches, pains in the heart and abdomen;
  • eating disorders;
  • increased sweating.

Some symptoms are also characteristic of temporary anxiety, which is not the cause of the pathology. But we must not forget that prolonged anxiety is a serious reason to take care of your own mental health. Late diagnosis leads to an extreme degree of panic, panic attacks and other severe disorders. The diagnosis is made from general factors and an assessment of the patient's condition, but how to understand what caused anxiety?

Causes of anxiety

It is possible to make a diagnosis based on the existing symptoms with the help of a doctor if their duration exceeds 6 months and strongly affects the person's condition. However, it is difficult to determine the cause due to the variety of influencing factors. There are several causes of anxiety disorder:

  • Environmental influences . The development of anxiety is influenced by the environment in which a person lives: stress at work, problems in relationships, etc. In addition, sources of anxiety are often the consequences of past events. Greater risks of pathology are typical for people with a difficult childhood, unhealthy relationships in the family, etc.
  • Genetic . Anxiety has also been associated with a history of familial psychiatric disorders.
  • Hyperthyroidism and other endocrine diseases. Anxiety acts as a side effect of the disease.
  • Dependencies . The use of drugs and alcohol is one of the causes of anxiety.
  • Caffeine . Many scientists have linked excessive caffeine consumption to the development of anxiety.
  • Other mental disorders . Anxiety also accompanies other mental illnesses (depression, personality disorders, etc. ).

Lifestyle changes, attempts to get rid of anxiety on your own help if anxiety is in a mild stage, but without treatment, anxiety disorders not only persist, but also aggravate a person's unstable condition. Whom to turn to if it is impossible to get rid of constant anxiety on your own?

Who and when helps with increased anxiety?

In dealing with anxiety, the right solution is to visit a psychotherapist. The goal of therapy for the doctor and the patient will be to reduce symptoms, and the main task is to return the quality of life to normal.

How does a psychotherapist help? There are several strategies in dealing with anxiety:

  • Lifestyle change. Work on bad habits, normalization of sleep and nutrition, as well as motivation for a healthy lifestyle have a strong effect on the path to recovery from anxiety.
  • Cognitive behavioral therapy. A psychotherapist tries to help a person deal with negative patterns in thinking and behavior, understand and get rid of obsessive thoughts and beliefs.
  • Exposure therapy. The work of the psychotherapist and the client on the fears that are at the base of the disease.
  • Medical treatment.

Treatment options offered by specialists are varied and are selected based on the wishes and individual characteristics of clients. Also, the specific method of treatment depends on the degree of development, the type of anxiety disorder.

It cannot be denied that attempts at self-treatment with a mild form often produce the desired effect. If anxiety and life in constant fear for the future bring serious disturbances in everyday life, then you should seek help now.

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