Millions of people deal with anxiety at some point during their life, from stressing over schoolwork, to feeling strain from your workload. While anxiety is a common emotion when life gets stressful, if it begins to interfere with your life it can morph into a full-blown anxiety disorder. The prevalence of anxiety and anxiety disorders has only risen over the last 20 years, which begs the question, how do you deal with it?
Medications and therapy are two of the most common treatments for anxiety, and they’re highly effective. But there are also natural anxiety remedies, like exercise, meditation and breathing exercises, that may be able to address your symptoms.
Read more: Best Online Mental Health Services
What is anxiety?
Anxiety — in small doses — is a normal part of human life. However, it can become a serious problem when it becomes too frequent, intense or disconnected from reality. Healthy anxiety levels can help warn us about potential threats and increase our reaction speeds. But with an anxiety disorder, people may feel overwhelming worry or fear about otherwise mundane matters. In these situations, the brain can become unable to function normally. Some of the more prevalent types of anxiety disorders are listed below.
- Generalized anxiety disorder: This is the most common type of anxiety disorder. When the onset of anxiety can occur around many different situations or events, without clear linkage to one kind, it is often categorized as generalized anxiety.
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder: OCD involves a combination of obsession and compulsion. The compulsions are often rituals or methods to prevent or reduce the intrusion of obsessive thoughts and feelings.
- Panic disorder: Panic is similar to anxiety but dramatically heightened. A panic episode can feel like a heart attack or other life-threatening event and comes on with an overwhelming sense of fear or dread.
- Post-traumatic stress disorder: PTSD is a response to a particular traumatic event or series of events. The impact of these events is so extreme that the mind and body can feel it recurrently.
- Social anxiety disorder: Many people feel some anxiety when engaging in or thinking about social situations. However, it may be a social anxiety disorder if these feelings are debilitating and recurring.
