Hey everyone! This week's video topic comes to me from you, and all of your requests.
Anxiety Disorder: What are are they? And what do we do?
So stay tuned
*Peaceful Melody*
So like I said, this week's topic is anxiety disorders.
And after getting that request from many of you, and then looking through the DSM, what actually falls under anxiety disorders?
What is that criteria? Blah blah blah blah blah.
There are a lot, and a couple of them I've already touched on, and a couple of them I will touch on in future videos.
But one is PTSD, and that is in a video I did probably about two months ago or so.
So check out my PTSD video for questions and, you know, comments about that.
But, um, and another one that I've had requested is OCD, which also falls under anxiety disorders, and that's Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
and I will do a video on that at a later time so don't forget to subscribe to my channel, cause when I put it out, you're gonna want to know.
So, the first thing I want to touch on, and I have my DSM here, my handy dandy DSM.
And just to try to make this as clear as possible, the first part of anxiety disorders that I want to talk about
Wow that is a mouthful. Anxiety disorders. Buduluhuluh.
Is Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or GAD, which I will call it from now on, cause that makes it so much easier.
So GAD is an excessive anxiety and worry occurring more days than not for a period of at least six months.
And I guess the best way I can think of this presenting itself in my office is when I have a patient who all they do it worry about
Let's see.
What people think of them.
And it happens a lot. Obviously this cannot otherwise be attributed to an eating disorder or something like that.
If someone just has anxiety over something else that can be accounted for in another diagnoses it's not GAD.
But what I have people that have GAD it's alomst like they worry so much about everything in their life
like, 'I - I don't want to be late for this and I - What if I don't a hundred percent on that test and - and oh my gosh and my apartment isn't clean and my friends are coming over - '
I mean everything is excessive worry. And the way that I always think excessive is, is that it's more intense of a worry than the actually situaton warrants.
So - I know that sounds like therapy talk and it's kind of annoying - but what I mean is
Like for me, if people are coming over to my house and I was like, 'Well my house isn't really clean.'
I'd be like, 'Well, you know, when I get home I'll tidy up as quick as I can and let it be what it be.'
Right? Cause they're my friends and they'll love me anyway.
So, that would be a normal, quote unquote 'normal', relative worry where you're like, 'Ugh, it's dirty, but I need to clean it'
And then you're over it, right? 'Oh, I'll just do this and dudududu."
But a person with GAD can't really do that. They will excessively worry about it so much that it can ruin their day, and they might want to try to leave work early
and they might even, like, hurt other people's feelings and do other things that are bad for them in order to alleviate this worry.
OK?
So that's GAD, Generalized Anxiety Disorder. And, as with all of the things I talk about, I mean, anxiety disorders have at least like, I don't know, fifty pages in the DSM.
So this is a very succinct version.
Now the next thing I want to talk about is social phobia.
Now, many of you talk about having social anxiety, and from what I can read in the DSM, social anxiety isn't actually a diagnoses under the anxiety disorder.
It would be called social phobia.
And, they say that the essential feature of social phobia is a marked and persistent fear of social or preference situations, in which embarassment may occur.
Now, I find this to be most prevalent with my teen clients, and my young adult clients, the ones in college and stuff.
Because we're in social situations a lot, and it can be very, like we may be in a new high school, and we're already nervous
and so then we start to worry about what everybody thinks, and we don't want to be embarrassed, and we don't want to embarrass ourselves
And, oh that person's giggling, ah they're giggling about me, and that's kind of how this presents itself.
We think that a lot of times anybody that's giggling or looking or somebody is pointing, we automatically think that they're talking about us
we're doing something embarrassing, and it's terrible.
So that's kind of what social phobia is, and under social phobia it says 'Social Anxiety Disorder' so that's kind of where that falls.
And that's is something that I honestly, along with all the anxiety disorders, it's really important that we go to therapy and we talk about this with someone
and we kind of process it through.
And, in my experience, CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, is the best with this
because we'll do what we call, like, downward, I think it's actually technically, downward arrow questioning
where we try to logically talk ourselves out of these, you know, kind of anxiety provoking situations
like, 'OK, well, there are seven hundred people in, you know, the cafeteria today, what are the chances that that person laughing is laughing about us?
Well, one is seven hundred. Well, is that really a high risk situation? Is it most likely that they're thinking and laughing about me?
Or is it least, less likely that they're thinking and laughing about me? Well, it's probably less likely.'
And we kind of talk ourselves out of it.
So if you suffer from social anxiety or social phobia, and you're wondering what to do about it, I would look into seeing a CBT therapist, OK?
So that's just a little tip.
And then, what is agoraphobia?
Everybody talks about that too, right? And that falls under this as well.
Now, agoraphobia differs from social anxiety or social phobia in that it doesn't have to do with social situations.
It's not relational. It's not like, well, that girl is pointing at me and she's being really mean, or that guy was whisper and I know he was whispering about me.
It's not relational with those kinds of people, it is all to do with us getting into a situation, which usually is social or just out of our house, out of our 'comfort zones'
so we may be safe at home, we may be safe at work. But anything else, it's not safe.
And our main concern is that we'll get somewhere, and we can't leave.
Either we can't leave easily, or without embarrassment.
And that our biggest worry is like, 'I'm gonna get, and then I'm gonna start to feel overwhelmed, and then I won't be able to leave or I'll have to embarrass myself in front of people
to leave, because I'll be stuck, you know, I'm in the middle seat in this opera, and i'm gonna have to get up and disturb all these people. It's gonna be really embarrassing for me.'
So that's kind of more what agoraphobia is vs. social anxiety.
So, social anxiety's more relational, agoraphobia's just like, situational. If that makes sense.
That's kind in my mind, how, if I had my white board I would draw a line and I would break them down like that.
So that is that. Then there are panic attacks and panic disorder.
Now panic attacks, I know many of you have said that you have had them, and that you have them a lot, and they're really overwhelming.
And that's the truth. They really suck. They're terrible.
And they not only come on quickly, but once we have them, then we always worry that we're gonna have more of them.
And, the symptoms of panic attacks can be somatic or cognitive in nature. So it can be like, heart palpitations, I can be sweating, I can be trembling, I can be shacking.
The most common thing that I hear in my practice is, 'I feel like I'm drowning.'
And, I think that's because we have those heart palpitations and we don't breath very well and we feel like we're drowning.
And so, our, um, these will happen usually in ten minutes or less and you can have a panic attack, but only if, and I want to make sure I say this correctly
Only if we have recurrent and unexpected panic attacks followed by at least a month of worry that we're going to have another
do we have panic disorder. OK?
So that how those differentiate, because panic attacks can happen, and some of us with Generalized Anxiety Disorder may have a panic attack ever once in a while
when we're put in a really stressful situation, but unless we have them recurrent and we worry about them all the time, we don't have panic disorder.
We would have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or agoraphobia, with panic attacks.
OK? So that's how those are differentiated.
And, just to give you an idea of how many other things are included under anxiety disorders, we have
Panic disorder without agoraphobia, panic disorder with agoraphobia, so you can see how all of these can be attached on to one another.
With or without. So that's why I just gave you, you know, those most common, and what I hear most from you, and what you wanted me to talk about.
So that is, you know, and umbrella view and the most common, um, panic related and anxiety related disorders, and, you know, different attacks that we can have.
OK? So now, what the heck do we do?
Well the first thing is I would definitely see a therapist, and I would also look into seeing your doctor, your GP, or your psychiatrist
because of the physical things that can come up when we have anxiety.
And we want to make sure that not only are we health, you know our physical health is under control
and managed, but we also want to make sure that our anxiety isn't causing any damage to anything.
I mean, I've had a client that had a little heart valve issue because of all the panic attacks, and the breathing
and I mean, she had a predisposition to the before, but you just want to make sure that everything is OK and that these aren't being caused by a medical condition.
And that's really important. That's something that I don't think I mention enough, is that when we think we have a certain mental disorder
that's why we need to go to our primary care doctor always, because we want to make sure that it can't be attributed to something else.
Because a lot of people will diagnose us, and they'll be wrong.
And it's not because they're not good clinicians, there's just a lot to factor in
and I want to make sure that we know that this is not being caused by something else.
And, if we cannot get these things under control, and our panic attack potentially are making school really hard
or we could potentially lose our job and things like that, we want to make sure that if we need medication they can give us that and they can help us out
and a CBT therapist or just a regular talk therapist can really, really help as we figure out where this came from, why we're doing it, and we can kind of talk ourselves out
like I talked that downward arrow questioning.
And it can sometimes help us out of that.
So make sure to take a look at that. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel, cause I will do a video on OCD, that will be coming up really soon
so stay tuned for that. And like I said I already did a video on PTSD, and I've done some videos on anxiety 101, and breathing techniques, those can help sometimes
when we feel our anxiety building
and, so, I would take a look at those and check those out. And don't forget to leave your comments below.
I know many of you, so many of you, struggle with this, and you've asked me to do this video. So please leave your comments.
If there are other things you want me to talk about, if you have tips and tricks and things that work for you
please share them. Our community is amazing and it's growing, and you're all helping each other. And I love to watch it to be honest, it's very exciting.
So keep working with me, keep helping one another, as we work toward a healthy mind and a healthy body.
Ok good. Yeah! I'm over heating.
Over heating!
If I was like a little thermometer I'd be like
Booo! The little steam would be coming out and the little red light would be flashing.
Heh!
Ok. Time to get outside, do something fun.
Yeah, yeah!
Maybe get a tan, cause I am like a ghost.
Yeah!