Every person knows worries and fears. This is part of normal life and is actually nothing pathological. But this inner torment can get out of hand and become so intense that it significantly impairs well-being and performance. Anxiety then becomes a disease in its own right. This is now medically proven.
In today’s increasingly complex world, many people, including children, suffer from such exaggerated anxiety, often even unconsciously. In studies and surveys, those patients who visit their family doctor because of an anxiety disorder are among the furthest ahead.
Palpable anxiety?
Not every feeling of insecurity requires medical help from the pharmacy or through expert psychological counseling. Once again, it should be emphasized that normal anxiety is a regular life function. It protects us from recognized dangers, forces us to be careful and thus reduces risks.
Worries, be it about the job, the economic development, the future of the children, about relatives and much more, are also, despite all the stress, nothing pathological, which in any case would require medical treatment or medication.
In addition to these completely normal moods, however, there are also anxiety states that go far beyond the understandable and normal level. The anxiety has then taken on a life of its own and become a clinical picture in its own right. This is by no means a rare phenomenon.
Experts estimate that about one in six German citizens has experienced states of such pathological anxiety requiring treatment at least once in his or her life. And the number seems to be increasing, partly because of current terrorist events.
Organic complaints of anxiety
Often, even the sufferer himself is not aware that the cause of the multifaceted complaints is actually an anxiety disorder. One suspects completely different, organic dysfunctions. Common symptoms of an anxiety disorder are:
- Palpitations
- Unexplained sweating
- Strong feeling of dizziness
- States of weakness
- Unwillingness
- Hands trembling
- Shortness of breath
- “lumpy feeling” in the throat
- Tendency to brood
- Sleep disturbances
- Nightmares
- Loss of zest for life
The heart may be completely healthy, a nervous disease or the like. Organ findings are not present in these cases of so-called primary anxiety disorders. Nevertheless, these are not “imaginary” disorders.
Considerable impairment by “soft” knees or legs, by dizziness and lightheadedness, by the feeling of often being shaky or trembling, and a noticeable feeling of weakness with great fearfulness must also make one think of an anxiety disorder. Of course, these signs are not yet evidence of an anxiety disorder that requires treatment.
Different forms of anxiety
Anxiety disorders can take different forms. They may be brief attacks of anxiety (panic attacks) that last only a few minutes and recur frequently. However, it can also be generalized anxiety that is always present (generalized anxiety syndrome).
Traumatic events can especially favor generalized anxiety as well as the so-called claustrophobia with fear in high-rise buildings, crowds or the like.
What can be done about pathological anxiety?
It would be wrong to try to overcome such morbid anxiety with reproaches and a “Get a grip!”. It is a disease, not a whim or recklessness of the sufferer. Diseases must be treated.
If the symptoms described or other complaints of unclear cause occur and the fear darkens, as it were, the whole attitude to life, one feels helplessly at its mercy, then those affected should first seek discussions with persons of trust. This can be relatives and friends, but it can also be the doctor.
Severe anxiety states require professional help from doctors or psychologists anyway. With psychotherapeutic measures, but also with effective medicines, these fears and the mostly associated mood lows (depression) can be treated.
Self-treatment by escaping into alcohol or other mood-enhancing drugs would be wrong; this could even intensify the anxiety.
