With the current pandemic outbreak the world is collectively going through major changes. It is honestly the biggest threat for our generation. People are afraid of dying, losing loved ones, and loss of the ability to provide for your family. Honestly almost everyone should be feeling some level of anxiety at this point. So let’s do a dive into anxiety and anxiety disorders.
Anxiety in its most basic form is an internal sense of worry. Feeling a little bit of anxiety for short periods of time is normal. When you are dealing with stressful situations it is a perfectly natural response. However when anxiety becomes very severe and lasts for prolonged periods of time, that is when it crosses over from normal everyday anxiety to a disorder.
There is a lot of stigma when it comes to anxiety. Many people, even those who are experiencing anxiety, just try to cure it with sheer force of will alone. It is so common to hear: What are you so worried about? Just suck it up! Why can’t you just calm down? It is a real medical issue. I like to describe anxiety like an allergy, but instead of being allergic to something physical (eg. peanuts) you are allergic to a thought (eg thinking about doing a presentation). Once you are exposed to your “anxiety allergy” your body naturally reacts without you being in control. Would you ever tell someone with a peanut allergy “Hey buddy just suck it up. It’s only a peanut butter sandwich!”. In my opinion “regular allergies” are more straightforward to deal with since the process is to create distance between you and your allergen. Peanuts in a room, once you leave the room you are all good to go, thoughts on the other hand stick around.
What is an Anxiety Disorder?
An anxiety disorder is when regular anxiety becomes very intense and/or prolonged for a long period of time. Well that’s the short answer but the long answer is far more complicated. Anxiety disorders come in many different types and below we will talk about the most common ones.
General Anxiety Disorder:
This one is the most common. This is when your anxiety basically becomes part of everyday life. It lasts for prolonged periods of time and occurs most days of the week. Here is how it was explained to me. Pretend that you were given a list of 5 things to do. Work down the list completing each item when you get to the 5th task… Damn what was it again! Spending a whole day worrying what you forget? How is this going to screw me over.. Ahhh!!! Then being in that state for hours each day….. several days a week…. lasting months. Yea, I was exhausted just trying to imagine that scenario.
Panic Disorder:
According to CAHM, a panic disorder is when you have repeated panic attacks, as well as being anxious of your next panic attack. Panic attacks are really intense periods of fear and discomfort. Typically they ramp up pretty quickly from feeling ok to a 10 on the panic meter within minutes. Followed with some if not all of the following severe physical symptoms like heart racing, trembling, shortness of breath, chest pain, nausea, light headed, fear of losing control. Honestly, I really didn’t understand how traumatic this was until I found out that patients commonly show up to a doctor’s office saying they think they had a heart attack when in actuality it was a panic attack.
Phobias
This is a fear based anxiety. Most phobias can be grouped into 4 main categories.
- Animals (fear of mice, spiders etc.)
- Environmental (fear of heights, fear or lightning, etc.)
- Injury (fear of needles, getting hurt, seeing blood, etc.)
- Situation (fear of public transportation, giving a presentation, being in small spaces, etc)
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD):
This is probably the one disorder that gets thrown around the most without really being understood. I know when I was growing up at school there were a lot of classmates of mine who would casually joke about having OCD. It would come up when they were doing a school project or tidying up. They would say things like “oh sorry I need this font to be just perfectly centred or I need to put my stuff back in a particular spot”. However that alone is not really OCD. Let say for example Student A works on a project and is fixing up the title page. Trying to line up everything to be just right and spend an hour. At this point it calls it a job well done and moves on. Student B same project, works on the title page and again lines everything up just right. However when student B finishes,they are back 20 min later checking on the title page. Then check back again, and again and again. They can’t stop themselves from checking the title page. OCD is when you feel physically compelled to do an action over and over again even though there is no reason to do so.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
This anxiety disorder comes following a traumatic event such as war, rape, phsycial abuse and traumatic events. I feel like this anxiety disorder is the one society has the most sympathy because it is the most understandable. A soldier comes back from a war torn country, it makes sense that they are always on edge even when sitting at home, completely safe. It makes sense that a woman that was raped is constantly in fear of being attacked, even if it’s the middle of the day at the mall. With the world dealing with the coronavirus pandemic this will actually be a source of PTSD for quite a lot of people. And sometimes PTSD can start to present a few months after the actual traumatic event.
Next week we will talk about basic checks for anxiety disorder and the procedure for getting treatment in Canada. Until next week stay safe and healthy. Remember to follow the advice given out by the Canadian Government and the CDC.
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