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Article by Shirley-Ann Pearman

Anxiety Disorders

Most of us feel anxious and tense in the face of threatening or stressful situations. Such feelings are normal reactions to stress. Anxiety is considered abnormal only when it occurs in situations that most people can handle with little difficulty. Anxiety disorders include a group of disorders in which anxiety either is the main symptom (generalized anxiety and panic disorders) or is experienced when the individual attempts to control certain maladaptive behaviors (phobic and obsessive-compulsive disorders). (Post-traumatic stress disorder, which involves anxiety following a traumatic even, was discussed in (Chapter 14). The following passage describes a person suffering from an anxiety disorder:

Hazel was walking down a street near her home one day when she suddenly felt flooded with intense and frightening physical symptoms. Her whole body tightened up, she began sweating and her heart was racing, and she felt dizzy and disoriented. She thought, “I must be having a heart attack! I can’t stand this! Something terrible is happening! I’m going to die.” Hazel just stood frozen in the middle of the street until an onlooker stopped to help her.

There are four types of symptoms of anxiety, and Hazel was experiencing symptoms of each type. First, she had physiological or somatic symptoms: Her heart was racing, she was perspiring, and her muscles tensed. You may recognize these symptoms as part of the fight-or-flight response discussed in Chapter 14. This is the body’s natural reaction to a challenging situation – the physiological changes of the fight-or-flight response prepare the body to fight a threat or to flee from it.

Second, Hazel had cognitive symptoms of anxiety: She was sure she was having a heart attach and dying. Third, Hazel had a behavioral symptom of anxiety: She froze, unable to move until help arrived. Fourth, she had the sense of dread and terror that make up the emotional symptoms of anxiety.

All of these symptoms can be highly adaptive when we are facing a real threat, such as a saber-toothed tiger in prehistoric times or a burglar today. They become maladaptive when there is no real threat to fight against or flee from. Hazel’s symptoms were not triggered by a dangerous situation but came “out of the blue.” Even when these symptoms do arise in response to some perceived threat, they can be maladaptive when they are out of proportion to the threat or persist after the threat has passed. Many people with anxiety disorders seem to view situations as highly threatening that most of us would consider benign, and they worry about those situations even when they are highly unlikely to occur. For example, people with social phobias are terrified of the possibility that they might embarrass themselves in public, and they therefore go to a great lengths to avoid social situations.

In one form of anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, the person experiences a constant sense of tension and dread. Inability to relax, disturbed sleep, fatigue, headaches, dizziness, and rapid heart rate are the most common physical complaints. In addition, the individual continually worries about potential problems and has difficulty concentration or making decisions. When the individual finally make a decision, it becomes a source for further worry (“Did I foresee all the possible consequences?”). Some self-descriptions provided by people with chronically high levels of anxiety appear in Table 13-3. Other anxiety disorders, such as panic disorder, phobias, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, are characterized by more focused anxiety and are discussed in more detail in the rest of this section.

Chapter 14 Psychological Reactions To StressAnxiety

Atkinson & Hilgard’sIntroduction To Psychology14th Edition

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