If you struggle with excessive anxiety for more days than not, it’s time to consider getting help to overcome your fears and worries. At American Psychiatric Care in Bel Air, Silver Spring, and Perry Hall, Maryland, their team specializes in diagnosing the type and cause of anxiety and creating an individualized treatment that relieves symptoms and teaches how to overcome apprehension. To schedule an in-person or telepsychiatry appointment, call the office or request an appointment online today.
Anxiety is a feeling of fear that develops when you face a physical or emotional threat. Your feeling of apprehension serves an important role because it alerts your brain to danger. Then your brain triggers hormones that surge through your body, energizing it to fight or escape.
Healthy anxiety turns into an anxiety disorder when the feeling seldom goes away. As a result, your body stays on alert, hormone levels stay unusually high, and you develop emotional and physical problems.
Along with anxiety, you may experience symptoms such as:
Anxiety often causes such intense feelings that you change your daily schedule to avoid events, places, and people.
Here’s a quick rundown of several types of anxiety disorders:
You experience anxiety or worry on most days about many possible things, such as your job, family, and health.
Social anxiety disorder causes an intense fear or apprehension of social situations or any event that forces you to perform, such as school and work.
If you have a panic disorder, you have recurrent and usually unexpected panic attacks. Panic attacks cause an intense, sudden fear accompanied by physical symptoms such as sweating, heart palpitations, and shortness of breath.
Separation anxiety disorder causes excessive fear when you’re apart from the significant people in your life, and you worry that something might happen to you if that person isn’t around.
This is a fear of a specific situation or object. For example, you may have an extreme fear of flying, spiders, or heights.
After completing a physical and psychological assessment, your board-certified psychiatric nurse practitioner creates a customized treatment plan to help you overcome your anxiety.
You may need anti-anxiety medication for severe symptoms and panic attacks. Psychotherapy (talk therapy) is very effective for treating anxiety disorders.
One type of therapy that helps many people with anxiety is called cognitive-behavioral therapy. This approach teaches you to change ingrained, negative thoughts, which, in turn, helps you adjust your feelings and diminish anxiety.
You may also benefit from an array of therapeutic approaches, such as meditation, progressive relaxation, and unique treatments for specific types of anxiety.
If you need help with anxiety, call American Psychiatric Care today or connect online to request an appointment.