A description of anxiety disorders

An anxiety state becomes an anxiety disorder when you add an interpretation of danger and respond accordingly. Individuals with anxiety disorders believe their catastrophic thoughts and attempt to problem solve or avoid their thoughts, feelings, and sensations.

Although there are other characteristics of each disorder, one way to think about the specific anxiety disorders is by understanding what you misinterpret as dangerous.

Put simply,

• Panic disorder

  Fear of sensations and avoidance of external or internal stimuli that may trigger those sensations.

• Generalized anxiety disorder

  Fear of thoughts, hypersensitivity to uncertainty, and problematic beliefs about the utility of worry.

• Obsessive compulsive disorder

  Fear of thoughts and hypersensitivity to uncertainty, guilt, and disgust.

• Social anxiety disorder

  Fear of sensations and thoughts and fear of positive evaluation and negative evaluation due to hypersensitivity to the possibility of rejection and perceived judgment.

The fight-or-flight response is inherently neutral; it isn’t good or bad. It’s just happening. A performer who frames the way that his heart races before going on stage as excitement is experiencing his fight-or-flight response positively. He will not complain of having an anxiety problem nor will he experience the other problems that occur during the struggle against anxiety.

Sensitivity to anxious sensations occurs in all of the anxiety disorders. This trait is called anxiety sensitivity and it is a biological predisposition that runs in families and is passed down through social interactions.

If you have anxiety sensitivity, you experience your fight-or-flight response as uncomfortable and potentially dangerous. You were likely born sensitive to being over-stimulated. You were likely socialized to fear and try to control your thoughts and sensations, because adults told you “calm down,” “don’t worry,” “don’t think like that,” and “you don’t need to feel like that.” In addition to telling you to control what you think and feel, you likely watched adults express worry when they felt uncertain and avoid when they felt anxious.

Everyone with an anxiety disorder also focuses on the future too much. Having goals and plans is an important part of achieving your potential. If you have an anxiety disorder, you probably spend a lot of your time thinking and worrying about the future, in an effort to manage your intolerance of uncertainty, to the detriment of the present moment.

Worry and unwanted intrusive thoughts can occur in all of the anxiety disorders. Hypersensitivity to uncomfortable feelings like uncertainty, guilt, disgust, rejection, disappointment, and shame are all common across the anxiety spectrum. I believe it is helpful for your long-term relief to have an underlying understanding of the patterns of thoughts and behaviors that all the anxiety disorders have in common and how you can respond differently, regardless of the content of the fear.