Understanding Anxiety: Symptoms, Disorders, and Coping Strategies
Anxiety
– Is a phenomenon of every age and culture; it is therefore a universal experience.
It has to do with endocrine and cholinergic mediators on alert that the person experiences, and it has a number of symptoms such as tachycardia and sweating. This is a principle of stress.
Feeling anxious is a way of life for many people and occurs frequently and regularly. Only when anxiety interferes with a person’s life do we talk about an anxiety disorder.
It comes in 100% of major or minor mental disorders (endogenous-exogenous).
These disorders may be very disabling, but if not intense, they alert to possible dangers in life.
Peplau said that anxiety is “the initial response to a psychological threat” that may announce a possible mental illness or the potential development of mental illness.
Anxiety can be defined as “the body’s reaction to a situation that is experienced as dangerous, characterized by a subjective feeling of inner tension, caused by a fear that is often undefined and probably irrational.”
Fear is a larger entity associated with anxiety, but fear is real and concrete; it is based on a fact, and I suffer in every situation that reminds me of a previous negative experience (e.g., a child born with Down syndrome and now I’m pregnant).
Anxiety can also be defined as uncertainty in a situation of non-specific threat that the person perceives as real. If it interferes with the adaptive capacity of the person, producing insecurity and difficulty in relationships with others, it is considered a pathological condition that will need professional help.
The vulnerability (sensitivity to affect) of people dealing with anxiety will be influenced by age (maturity of the person), health, genetic predisposition, education, and past experiences.
If positive experiences outweigh negative ones, the vulnerability is less because the experience of positive resolution creates a “dregs” that abates this anxiety. Support systems such as family and friends can help make the person less vulnerable to stress.
Anxiety Disorders: Control is not possible; important susceptibility maintained over time can lead to disorders that are not easily observable. The assessment must be made globally and measured, unhurried, and with time. The community nurse is the closest to the person’s life. Through verbal and nonverbal behaviors, the patient communicates things we should consider. Verbal behaviors such as continued demand for health care services, health report problems about themselves, and there may be situations of verbal and physiological responses such as diarrhea, muscle tension, back and neck pain, spontaneous sweating, headaches, tremors of hands, and sleep disturbances. The physical and psychological relationship is intimate, and an imbalance in one of these systems can affect the other. This must always be kept in mind, as it is one of the main problems of the community. Welfare should be bio-psycho-social, which are fluctuations around the average state of optimal health. To improve health, we must also work in the psychological field, increasing potential and personal values (e.g., religious beliefs, self-improvement).
Grades:
- Mild: Not a disease. Increases alertness and improves problem-solving.
- Moderate: Appears as an immediate concern, reducing the perceptual field and impairing reasoning with natural events (phobias). It impairs learning, and attention becomes selective. Anxiety is expressed through ordinary means (e.g., nail biting or focusing on negative aspects of something or someone) but can cause injury. Individuals are able to seek help to solve the problem (professional or otherwise).
- Severe: Inability to solve problems and need for professional help with a clear business plan that does not cause unnecessary doubts and reflections. May become unable to carry out activities of daily living. Displays behaviors aimed at achieving relief (stopping, seeking help, medical care). The person remains conscious.
- Panic: Inability to confront and resolve the situation in any way. Loss of disorientation, circumstances, anxiety, and impulse control (increased motor activity). Begins to ask for help from people they believe can assist, often through compulsive activities (walking, spinning). They experience a very high level of fear, with an absolute lack of control over reasoning and an inability to act in an organized manner.
* Dictatorship of the weak situation where people use their frailty, disability, or weakness to impose their wishes on others (this is usually seen in families).
Neurosis:
Common features include great distress over symptoms and perceiving situations as intensely annoying. The patient is conscious and does not lose touch with reality. In the full scan, no organic cause justifies it. As it develops, gains (Defense against anxiety reduce emotional pain).
In early childhood and adolescence, if there is a reduction in stimulation, shyness, and low self-esteem, the likelihood of anxiety increases.
The state of anxiety, when it develops, causes relief if the person receives “extraordinary care” for neurotic reasons (which reinforces the neurosis). This is common among adolescents and may be objectively rewarding (punishment, therapeutic recovery measures, or pharmacological) or subjective (ideas, fantasies).
People may act to defend themselves from these disorders: drug and medical support and counseling.
- Ante tics, perform the same movement consciously and masterfully change over time, physical activity supports the search for targets ensuring short-medium term (trips, parties, entertainment), relaxation techniques (this is true for any state of anxiety, but when it reaches panic or anxiety state, it should be replaced by psychotherapy to find the underlying reasons), can help improve the situation of anxiety whenever the person is not very crowded. In any case, if cases are not serious, they usually tend to resolve spontaneously.
Defense System Against Anxiety:
- Mechanism Aware of: Physical activity, relaxation techniques, positive support (amateur or professional, others who have suffered the problem).
- Mechanism Unconscious: The urge to act is unconscious. Sometimes they can generate harmful behaviors that are maladaptive and harmful to the patient’s health.
Common clinical symptoms of anxiety neurosis include:
- People who are anxious, hesitant, and hypochondriacal (even going to undergo multiple surgeries with little justification).
- They report having sexual disorders (mainly, the most striking impotence in men compared to women).
- Sleep problems (not corresponding to the typical changes of depression). Sun alterations of any kind. Altered complex with different manifestations.
- Food disorders (asthenia, impotence, etc.) may stop eating for a while or eat anxiously.
- Behavioral disorders resulting from the above.
Anxiety Neurosis:
For this to occur, there must be a basic neurosis (perfectionism, painstaking care in dressing, etc.). Exaggerated perfectionism presents with a transient state known as “opening statement”—a transient state of suspicion that may develop into panic attacks. When this neurosis presents as panic attacks, due to an accumulation of stress at any given time, the person “bursts” suddenly, producing a neurotic crisis. Physiological reactions occur such as dyspnea, chest pain, palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, vertigo, numbness, and sweating. In a hysterical crisis, a person may lose consciousness and fall to the ground (in extreme situations, this loss of consciousness can be forced to draw attention, producing intense suffering). Throughout the process of anxiety neurosis, individuals may experience feelings of fear of death, fear of going crazy, and struggle to fit in with the group, leading to disruption of social relationships. The symptoms are centered on the person, and during the process, they do not lose their sense of reality. Signs that guide the development of a crisis of anxiety: Some motor tension, hyperactivity, hypervigilance, difficulty concentrating, chronic fatigue manifest, and in social situations, they are shown by tension (uncomfortable) and distraction.
Phobic Neurosis:
Intense and persistent irrational fear linked to an object (mouse, cockroach, etc.) or situations (examinations). There is an intense desire to avoid them. Note that there is no significant danger. The phobic object creates so much distress that it may lead to feelings of impending doom: Aerophobia (phobia of heights), Agoraphobia (open spaces), Claustrophobia (phobia of enclosed spaces), Zoophobia (uncontrollable desire to run away from animals), Entomophobia (fear of insects), Nyctophobia (fear of the dark), Mysophobia (fear of dirt), and Nasophobia (fear of disease). The person is aware that what happens is absurd, but they cannot avoid it, and they feel bad in these situations because they must remain in a state of permanent alert to avoid phobic circumstances.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD):
Obsessions are recurrent and compulsive components. People feel invaded by obsessive thoughts that are distressing. It is something spontaneous and natural that happens in everyday life. Ritual behaviors appear (the most typical example is hand washing). These individuals are rigid and stereotyped.
Hysterical Neurosis:
Within it is conversion hysteria (an unreal situation resulting from a shock). The epileptic attack or seizure can be understood as synonyms, but the epileptic attack is considered more studied. In the hysterical attack, there is minimal damage, occurring in the presence of someone forever. Tearing clothes and pulling hair are the most common behaviors (not so frequent is tongue biting). There is no loss of bowel control. It can take 10-15 minutes to resolve. They are sometimes called dissociative hysterical and refer to individuals who have terrifying visions for their life, but they are not real (dissociation of thought). Childish situations often develop (in children) and are very theatrical; those closest to them are fixed on what is happening. It is fitting that immature people with low frustration tolerance have a tendency to self-delusion.
Neurotic Depression:
It is further noted that depression predominates over the state of anxiety. This worsens the basic neurosis in situations of social failure, loss of health, loss of loved ones, etc., sometimes leading to feelings of guilt about what is happening. They cause sleep disorders, anorexia or bulimia, and weight loss (sometimes with little justification), situations of constant crying, apathy, and bad character, decreased sexual activity, and amenorrhea. They complain of dry mouth and constipation. Expressed pessimism is common. Self-injury occurs in more advanced cases, along with negativism, inability to have illusions, and headaches. They constantly complain of palpitations.