/assets/images/provider/photos/2755638.jpeg)
4 Things We Want You to Know About Anxiety
It would be rare to find someone who hasn’t experienced anxiety in life. From wedding jitters to pre-interview nerves, anxiety and worry are part of our everyday lives.
When worry takes center stage and crosses over into full-blown anxiety, however, it can become a serious quality of life issue. And this has occurred for slightly more than 19% of the adult population in the United States.
Given that nearly 1 in 5 American adults struggles with anxiety and Oct. 10 is World Mental Health Day, the team here at Braincare Performance Center - Cardiff thought it would be a good idea to discuss anxiety here.
In the following, we share four important points about anxiety, which include how to break free from this common mental health issue.
1. Anxiety comes in many forms
The more than 40 million adults in the U.S. who have an anxiety disorder, to say nothing of the scores of kids who struggle with anxiety, don’t all have the same type of the condition. The American Psychiatric Association reports that, in any given year, anxiety disorders often break out like this among our population:
- Phobias — affect 8-12% of the adult population
Social anxiety disorder — 7% of adults - Panic disorder — 2-3% of adults
- Agoraphobia — up to 1.7% of adults and kids
- Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) — nearly 1% of adolescents and nearly 3% of adults
- Separation anxiety disorder (SAD) — 4% of kids and up to 2% of adults
These disorders center around anxiety, but each has its own unique characteristics.
2. Anxiety is more than worry
The anxiety that accompanies an anxiety disorder goes far beyond worry and nerves. Common hallmarks of clinical anxiety include:
- Excessive worry
- Sense of impending doom
- Trouble sleeping
- Heart palpitations
- Trouble breathing
- Difficulty concentrating
- Tremors
- Excessive sweating
These symptoms (and this list is far from comprehensive) can come and go or they can be more constant and impact you every waking moment.
3. Anxiety is physical too
When you have an anxiety disorder, you can get stuck in a fight-or-flight response. Under normal circumstances, this stress response is one that’s supposed to help you fight or flee a perceived threat.
When you’re faced with danger, your nervous system kicks off a chain of reactions that include muscle tension, an increase in heart rate, and pupils dilation, among other things.
So, when you have an anxiety disorder that traps you in a stress response, you can feel physical symptoms such as fatigue and body aches.
4. You can break free from anxiety
An anxiety disorder can cause you to feel trapped in a world where excessive worry overshadows everything in your life. While it may seem bleak when you’re in the midst of it, we assure you that you can break free from anxiety.
At our practice, we specialize in noninvasive magnetic e-resonance therapy (MeRT), which is an innovative treatment that resets the neurotransmission activity in your brain. Simply put, through MeRT, we create healthier neural pathways in your brain that take the focus off anxiety and onto more positive thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
If you’d like to explore how MeRT can play a role in helping you to better control your anxiety, please call our office in Cardiff, California, at 858-306-1070 or request an appointment online today.