Please check with the appropriate physician regarding health questions and concerns. Although we strive to deliver accurate and up-to-date information, no guarantee to that effect is made. Anxiety is a physical manifestation of thoughts and fears about the ability to manage circumstances, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center. Although a certain amount of anxiety is normal, when fear and worry inhibit an individual from taking steps to resolve the issue, it is important to identify the cause of the anxious feelings and take action to remedy the situation or consider a change in behavior.
Maintaining a healthy balance between work and personal life requires constant adjustment and is an ongoing process, according to MayoClinic.
Time management--both at home and on the job--is a learned skill. Learning to ask for help, exercising the option to say no and taking time for personal development and self-nurture often make the difference between physical and mental health and burnout. The ability to adapt to stress fosters resilience and self esteem, two important mechanisms to avoid unnecessary anxiety, says psychiatrist and author Daniel Amen. During times of stress, people often turn to unhealthy behaviors to alleviate anxiety.
Negative thought patterns, a lack of exercise and consumption of empty calories often increase rather than diffuse anxious feelings and can contribute to ill health and depression. In a review of approximately 1, at-risk cardiovascular patients, researchers found a strong association between an unhealthy lifestyle and the degree of anxiety the patients experienced 2.
Thus, "learning" is not limited to the most common usage of the word referencing academic learning school. In psychological terms, learning can occur without any intention to learn, and without a conscious awareness that something has been learned. Any change in behavior suggests the person has learned a new response to a particular situation. The term will become clearer as we examine the two primary ways that organisms learn: classical conditioning and operant conditioning.
Classical conditioning was the first type of learning behavior to be demonstrated a laboratory setting. Under ordinary circumstances, certain types of environmental stimuli will produce a reflexive, behavioral response.
For instance, if a puff of smoke is blown toward your face, your behavioral response is to blink your eyes. You never have to "learn" to blink your eyes. It is just an automatic reflex. Therefore, in classical conditioning terminology, an unconditioned stimulus , or UCS e.
Thus, without training, a puff of smoke unconditioned stimulus; UCS causes one to reflexively blink unconditioned response; UCR. Classical conditioning demonstrated that people can be trained to produce these same reflexive, responses to a neutral stimulus, called a "conditioned stimulus" or CS.
The CS is a stimulus that would not ordinarily cause the reflexive response. This learning occurs through a process called paired association. A reflexive behavioral response can be elicited by pairing an unconditioned stimulus UCS with a conditioned stimulus CS. With training, a person will reflexively blink to a neutral stimulus, such as bell, when repeatedly paired with a puff of smoke.
Obviously, the sound of a bell does not ordinarily cause someone to reflexively blink their eyes. However, if the bell CS is paired numerous times with a puff of smoke UCS , then eventually the bell alone will cause someone to blink their eyes. Increased levels of norepinephrine cause higher levels of anxiety. In pharmacology, norepinephrine blockers lower the levels of norepinephrine and do the same to a patient as do serotonin re-uptake blockers. Among adults, agents that alter noradrenergic functioning are powerful anxiolytics.
Similarly, agents, such as yohimbine, that increase firing of the locus coeruleus LC are potent anxiogenic compounds. Due to these connections between anxiety and neurotransmitters, medication is commonly used to treat anxiety. In terms of treating anxiety with medication, it is important to note medication is one option of treatment and not always a one-stop treatment plan.
Anti-anxiety medications are not cures for anxiety disorders, but they can help manage some of the symptoms. Medications anti-anxiety drugs and antidepressants have been found to be beneficial for disorders other than specific phobia, but relapse rates are high once medications are stopped Heimberg et al.
Figure 1. Medication such as benzodiazepines are commonly prescribed for anxiety disorders. Anti-anxiety medications help reduce the symptoms of anxiety, such as panic attacks, or extreme fear and worry.
The most common anti-anxiety medications are called benzodiazepines such as Valium and Xanax. Benzodiazepines can treat generalized anxiety disorder. In the case of panic disorder or social phobia social anxiety disorder , benzodiazepines are usually second-line treatments, behind SSRIs or other antidepressants.
Short half-life or short-acting benzodiazepines such as lorazepam and beta-blockers are used to treat the short-term symptoms of anxiety. Beta-blockers help manage physical symptoms of anxiety, such as trembling, rapid heartbeat, and sweating, that people with phobias experience in difficult situations.
Beta-blockers block the effects of epinephrine and reduce heart rate and blood pressure. Taking beta-blockers for a short period of time can help the person keep physical symptoms under control and can be used as needed to reduce acute anxiety. Figure 2. Beta-blockers block receptor sites for adrenaline, or epinephrine, so that it lessens the physical symptoms of anxiety. Buspirone which is unrelated to the benzodiazepines is sometimes used for the long-term treatment of chronic anxiety.
In contrast to the benzodiazepines, buspirone must be taken every day for a few weeks to reach its full effect. It is not useful on an as-needed basis. Anti-anxiety medications such as benzodiazepines are effective in relieving anxiety and take effect more quickly than the antidepressant medications or buspirone often prescribed for anxiety.
However, people can build up a tolerance to benzodiazepines if they are taken over a long period of time and may need higher and higher doses to get the same effect.
Some people may even become dependent on them. To avoid these problems, doctors usually prescribe benzodiazepines for short periods, a practice that is especially helpful for older adults, people who have substance abuse problems, and people who become dependent on medication easily.
If people suddenly stop taking benzodiazepines, they may have withdrawal symptoms or their anxiety may return. Therefore, benzodiazepines should be tapered off slowly. Like other medications, anti-anxiety medications may cause side effects. Some of these side effects and risks are serious. The most common side effects for benzodiazepines are drowsiness and dizziness. Other possible side effects include.
Beta-blockers generally are not recommended for people with asthma or diabetes because they may worsen symptoms related to both conditions. Biofeedback is a technique that can be used to track and monitor physiological changes in the body in order to learn to control them. During biofeedback, a person may be connected to sensors to monitor heart rate, temperature, and other biological changes in order to practice controlling their reactions to various situations.
Because anxiety disorders are connected to the way people perceive situations, cognitive therapies are particularly effective in thinking about and treating anxiety disorders.
Some anxiety disorders, such as phobias, also stem from learned experiences, such as traumatic events. Cognitive theories suggest that anxiety disorders develop through thought patterns that overestimate threats to safety, therefore anxiety is caused by cognitive misinterpretations and can be treated by developing strategies to combat these thoughts. Therapies include cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, intolerance of uncertainty therapy.
Behavioral theories contend that anxiety disorders are mostly caused by conditioning, by modeling, or through experiences triggering their development, such as in specific phobias.
Behavioral therapies often work in conjunction with cognitive therapies such as in CBT , but they may also include behavior therapy, exposure treatment, systematic desensitization, and flooding. CBT is an example of one type of psychotherapy that can help people with anxiety disorders. CBT teaches people different ways of thinking, behaving, and reacting to anxiety-producing and fearful objects and situations. CBT has three phases: education, application, and relapse prevention.
In the education phase, the individual is informed on the different effects anxiety can have physically and more importantly mentally.
Understanding and being able to recognize their reactions will help the person to manage and eventually reduce his or her overall response. CBT can also help people learn and practice social skills, which is vital for treating social anxiety disorder. CBT can be conducted individually or with a group of people who have similar difficulties.
In CBT, patients are taught skills to help identify and change problematic thought processes, beliefs, and behaviors that tend to worsen symptoms of anxiety, and practice applying these skills to real-life situations through exposure exercises. Patients learn how the automatic appraisals or thoughts they have about a situation affect both how they feel and how they behave.
Similarly, patients learn how engaging in certain behaviors, such as avoiding situations, tends to strengthen the belief that the situation is something to be feared. A key aspect of CBT is exposure exercises, in which the patient learns to gradually approach situations they find fearful or distressing, in order to challenge their beliefs and learn new, less fearful associations about these situations. Newer developments in the treatment of anxiety disorders are focusing on novel interventions, such as the use of certain medications to enhance learning during CBT Otto et al.
As we advance our understanding of anxiety and related disorders, so too will our treatments advance, with the hopes that for the many people suffering from these disorders, anxiety can once again become something useful and adaptive, rather than something debilitating. Among the cognitive-behavioral orientated psychotherapies the two main treatments are cognitive behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy ACT. Intolerance of uncertainty therapy and motivational interviewing are two new treatments for GAD that are used as either stand-alone treatments or additional strategies that may enhance CBT.
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