When Does Anxiety Warrant Professional Help?

Anxiety is common, and everyone has it sometimes. But if you have unusually intense or persistent anxiety, it becomes a big presence in your life and could require professional attention. 

At Jehovahs Behavioral Care, we offer expert mental health support for anxiety disorders. Here’s what you need to know about anxiety disorders and when to seek help.

Normal anxiety versus anxiety disorders

Anxiety describes feelings of nervousness, uneasiness, and worry. Everyone experiences anxiety occasionally — particularly with all the stressful events in America and worldwide in the last few years.

Anxiety is like your body’s warning system: It can alert you to threats and help you choose your behaviors carefully — so, sometimes, it’s useful. 

Stressful situations trigger the release of cortisol and adrenaline into your bloodstream. Those hormones course through your body and cause reactions like sweating before a big event, pacing, butterflies in your stomach, insomnia, self-consciousness, and worry. All those things may happen with normal anxiety. 

With normal anxiety, the stress hormones fade once the anxiety-provoking situation passes, and symptoms generally stop. However, with anxiety disorders, the anxiety lasts and becomes disruptive and harmful. Anxiety disorders include a family of mental disorders:

• Specific phobia: intense fear of something that’s not a serious threat
• Social anxiety disorder: social situations cause irrational anxiety
• Panic disorder: repeated panic attacks with physical symptoms
• Agoraphobia: intense fear around being trapped and unable to get help
• Generalized anxiety disorder: disruptive, frequent, out-of-proportion worry
• Separation anxiety disorder: excessive fear of separation from someone else

When you have an anxiety disorder, you’re frequently or constantly in stress-response mode, which can seriously affect your mental and physical health. People with untreated anxiety have more than twice the usual risk of suicide attempts. But you don’t have to suffer because anxiety disorders are treatable.

Anxiety disorder symptoms

Anxiety disorder symptoms are unique to the particular disorder, but many anxiety disorders share symptoms. Some common ones include:

• Uncontrollable worrying
• Frequently feeling on-edge
• Frequent irritability
• Growing tired easily
• Panic attacks (symptoms like hyperventilating and feelings of incoming doom)
• Feeling that you can’t control your thoughts or body 
• Avoiding certain situations, places, or people because they trigger fear or nervousness

Anxiety disorders cause severe symptoms that prevent you from living your life normally, and the condition may become debilitating over time if untreated. Up to 60% of people with anxiety disorders also experience depression, which can intensify the symptoms of both disorders. 

When to seek help for anxiety

Approximately 3 in 10  American adults have anxiety disorders, but far too many people with anxiety disorders go undiagnosed and don’t receive the treatment they need. In fact, only about 43% of people with generalized anxiety disorder are currently in treatment.  

If you have frequent anxiety that affects your relationships, causes issues at work, or disrupts your daily life, it’s time to consider treatment, so don’t hesitate to contact our office for compassionate anxiety support. 

By working closely with our highly qualified psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, you’ll receive an accurate diagnosis and start an anxiety treatment plan to help you reclaim your life. 

To learn more about anxiety treatments that can help you get your life back on track, call Jehovahs Behavioral Care or click the online appointment scheduler now.