Generalized Anxiety Disorder - GAD

What causes anxiety attacks is fear. When fear becomes too strong, anxiety develops, yet the fear is often imagined.

People can go for years without being aware that they have anxiety. Once the awareness begins, they become afraid of the anxiety response. What causes anxiety attacks is fear. When fear becomes too strong, anxiety develops, yet the fear is often imagined.

There is a professionally recognized distinction between the two emotions of fear and anxiety. Fear develops when actual danger is acknowledged. The source of danger, when it becomes obvious, causes the person to experience fear, so that the autonomic nervous system initiates an active fight-or-flight response to aid survival. Anxiety, however, may occur when someone feels unduly worried about his or her parent's health, or if they merely suspect that someone will die. We can see, therefore, that it is natural to fear someone pointing a rifle at you, but unnatural to live a life constantly wondering if your death is imminent, or if your actions might harm someone when there is no obvious, direct link.

GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder), or Anxiety and Panic Disorder, cannot be understood until fear is understood. When a fear response occurs in someone with no danger present, the person is experiencing an impulsive panic attack. Panic attacks are almost impossible to tell apart from a state of fear, except that they usually accompany a sense of impending doom which often includes expectation of dying, going crazy or losing control. Typically, the latter cognitive symptoms do not occur during a straightforward state of fear.

Fear and panic have two components. The first is the cognitive and subjective, e.g. "I feel afraid" or "I'm terrified I'm going to die." The second is physiological, which may be experienced as increased heart-rate or heavy breathing.

Anxiety, on the other hand, creates a "complex blend of unpleasant emotions and cognitions" (Barlow, 1988, 2002a), and the person often worries about his or her future. Such unpleasant emotions are dispersed in a raw state of fear to allow adequate autonomic response.

Anxiety is not always a bad thing. It can help us to prepare for potential threats. Moderate degrees of anxiety can actually enhance performance and learning abilities. Experience of mild anxiety about taking final exams at college may be used to advantage. The anxiety may push a person to take action to study harder so that he or she can overcome a challenge or pass an exam.

When anxiety becomes maladaptive, chronic, or severe, it is regarded as anxiety disorder. We have a problem.

GAD – Generalized Anxiety Disorder

We all worry sometimes or feel anxious occasionally. This is because anxiety is a usable and adaptive emotion that gears us up to protect ourselves from potential threats. However, for some of us, anxiety and worry become mayhem. Anxiety may build up to such a high level that a sufferer begins to worry constantly over minor or major events that have or have not occurred. At such a level, we have an excessive, unreasonable, chronic disorder known as Generalized Anxiety, or GAD. GAD at one time was known as "free-floating" anxiety.

For someone to be clinically diagnosed with GAD, a sufferer must have worried relentlessly for more than six months, and found trouble in gaining control. Worry often develops from constant inability to predict different activities or events. GAD is unrelated to worry that is associated with other concurrent Axis I disorders, e.g. panic attacks. The subjective or one-sided experience of constant worry often accompanies at least three of six other symptoms, which often include muscle tension, accompanied by fatigue or exhaustion.

People with GAD often live in constant worry of the future. Sufferers often feel apprehensive, and experience chronic tension. Consequently, they lack self-control and self-discipline, and may become obsessively watchful for potential threats in their surroundings. They may often engage in risky behavior such as avoidance of activities or people that seem to induce their symptoms, and they may procrastinate. People with GAD may frequently call people they know and love to make sure they're safe.

The symptoms of GAD are often the same as those of agoraphobia. An agoraphobic also worries constantly about the future, wondering when the next panic attack will occur. They often have a fear of dying, and may experience ongoing social phobia and anxiety. Social phobia causes the sufferer to experience negative thoughts about potential social events. The worry relates to generalized anxiety, which is known as "basic anxiety disorder."

People with GAD often feel depressed and emotionally disturbed. Most of the worries stem from work, family, personal illness (imagined or real) and work. These people find it difficult to make decisions, and when they do make one, they will worry constantly about whether they made the right one. They often imagine their decisions have unforeseen consequences leading to disaster.

Most people with GAD lack common sense and fail to appreciate "logic." People without GAD and with healthy approaches to survival deduce or infer that if we have no control over long sequences of events, it is pointless worrying and tormenting ourselves.

GAD builds up anxiety to a point where sufferers are compelled to live by the illusions they have created, and are unable to experience the present moment wherein they might actually feel contentment.

Now that you have an overall understanding of GAD, it is time to move toward the first GAD online therapy session. We recognized earlier on in the guide that self-control, self-esteem, confidence, and self-discipline are missing. Let's help you in the first session to start developing coping mechanisms to overcome Generalized Anxiety by using useful CBT techniques.

Help is available online - use the links below to learn more or to take a test.