How Do You Know If You Have an Anxiety Disorder?

Anxiety therapy can be extremely helpful, even life changing for those who suffer some severe anxiety. But everyone goes through periods of stress and anxiety, and it's not always a sign of a full blown anxiety disorder. That means that the treatments needed are not the same for everyone, and the wrong treatment may not help at all, even causing problems of its own. To understand why, it's helpful to look at the different different causes of severe anxiety, and the type of anxiety therapy that is useful for each one. The most common include: 1. Excessive stress. Anyone can experience high levels of anxiety during stressful periods of their life, and simple techniques such as learning basic relaxation practices or doing physical exercise can often solve the problem. 2. Diet or lifestyle. Caffeine, alcohol and other common substances can increase anxiety, and altering diet or intake can sometimes banish it. 3. Anxiety disorder. Anxiety is supposed to help alert you when something isn't right, but some brains “kick on” with anxiety even when they shouldn't. Drugs may be prescibed, or a variety of psychotherapy treatments could be used to manage and overcome anxiety. 4. Phobias and traumatic experiences. Sometimes a specific event or situation triggers anxiety overload. Post traumatic stress syndrome, social anxiety and phobias are good examples of this. A specific type of psychotherapy known as cognitive behavioral therapy is highly successful at treating these conditions. 5. Other psychological conditions. Anxiety may be associated with clinical depression, bipolar disorder and many other conditions. These conditions need to be treated in their own right before the anxiety is likely to susbside. Clearly, with so many causes there is no single anxiety therapy that will work for everyone. Unfortunately the causes of anxiety are notoriously hard to diagnose and many doctors or therapists will either misdiagnose them, or recommend therapies that end up not working. That's because the traditional way of diagnosing anxiety involved educated guesswork based on talking to the patient. For a more objective take, more doctors are using brain scans to aid in diagnosis. A brain scan shows which areas of the brain are overactive or underactive which can help quickly identify the root cause. It can also be used to track the effectiveness of anxiety therapy, by seeing whether brain activity patterns are changing for the better or not. If you are struggling with anxiety, ask your therapist or doctor for information on having your brain scanned. It could aid your diagnosis and help you get the best treatment possible, right away.