Anxiety Disorders, Essay Example

Introduction

The term ‘Generalized Anxiety Disorder’ or GAD relates to a psychological disorder where people tend to worry over trivial things in their daily lives. This creates symptoms of discomfort that can include such items as fatigue, trouble sleeping and sore muscles. GAD is a mood disorder that is highly influenced by stress. May also include obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) a neurological condition by unwanted thoughts that create anxiety. (ADAA, 2012)

Types of Disorder

Freud examined three aspects of anxiety and tension.

1. Reality Anxiety: The most basic form of anxiety based upon the fear and possibility of real events e.g. falling down some steps. The best way of tension reduction being to avoid them.
2. Neurotic Anxiety: That which comes from the unconscious mind and ultimately takes control of the person resulting in punishment
3. Moral Anxiety: That of violating your personal code of conduct and ethics that result in complexes of guilt or shame.

One of the most common anxieties relates to that of Phobias. Here the person has a fear of a certain situation and the need to avoid it. This may be items like agoraphobia ( fear of the outdoors), arachnophobia ( fear of spiders). Many phobias go unreported because the sufferer wishes to conceal the fact of the fear. This contrasts to that of Reality anxiety that is based upon the fear of certain known events i.e. the fear of falling down the stairs and as such avoiding the obstacle. With the phobia it is the fear that such a situation may manifest itself at some point in time and again the objective being to avoid that situation.

Avoidance behaviours may vary but include such actions as: (i) Not to do actions that may put you at risk of the situation e.g. agoraphobia – avoid going outdoors (ii) Avoid the manifestation of such actions that might create the circumstance of the fear or anxiety.

References

ADAA. (2012, 7 2). Anxiety Disorders. Retrieved from ADAA: www.adaa.org