Generalized Anxiety Disorder and How To Manage It
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) affects millions of people across the globe. While everyone experiences worry and fear from time to time, GAD is different. It’s defined as excessive, ongoing fear that negatively impacts your overall quality of life.
When you’re dealing with generalized anxiety disorder, it can feel like your anxiety controls everything. You might feel like you can’t do things you typically enjoy. Or, you might live in constant fear of the worst possible scenario happening at any given time.
If there’s a potential silver lining to GAD, it’s often very manageable — with the right help.
Let’s take a closer look at generalized anxiety disorder, including what to look for and how you can manage it.
What Does GAD Look Like?
The signs and symptoms of generalized anxiety can vary from person to person. While there are some common symptoms to look out for, it doesn’t mean you’ll experience all of them. Or, you might experience them with different severity than someone else.
With that in mind, however, some of the most common signs of GAD include:
Persistent worry, even without the existence of a real threat
Always thinking about the worst possible outcome
Difficulty concentrating
Restlessness
Inability to let go of fear or worry
Anxiety can also manifest itself with physical symptoms. When you’re experiencing anxious thoughts, your body might start to tremble. You might experience a racing heart, shortness of breath, nausea, or dizziness.
Unfortunately, physical and emotional symptoms can wreak havoc on your life. Anxiety can cause a change in your sleeping and eating habits. It can make you withdraw from people and things you love and make it difficult to enjoy day-to-day living.
Does Anxiety Go Away on Its Own?
Again, anxiety is often a very manageable condition. However, it rarely just “disappears” on its own. Emotions demand to be felt, and that includes the fear and worry that comes with anxiety.
Acknowledging that you’re struggling is often the first step toward treating your anxious thoughts. Next, you need to get to the underlying cause. That’s something you shouldn’t have to do on your own. Working with a therapist is usually the best way to better understand your GAD, where it stems from, and what you can do about it.
Dealing With Daily Symptoms
You can do things on your own to make your symptoms seem less severe and controlling.
After you’ve acknowledged your anxiety, try to fight back against it by taking control of your thoughts. Ask yourself the worst possible scenario and what you would do if that happened. Anxiety is often made stronger by the unknown. When you put all of the possibilities on the table, it takes a lot of power away from your fear.
Practicing mindfulness can also help. Close your eyes and take in your surroundings. What do you hear? What do you smell? How does your body feel right now? Focus on taking slow, deep breaths and letting thoughts pass you by like clouds you can’t hold onto. A few minutes of mindfulness is often enough for an anxious thought or idea to pass.
Talking about your GAD can also make a difference. Lean on your support system, or spill your thoughts out in a journal. Sometimes, something as simple as getting your anxious thoughts on paper can cause them to seem less overwhelming.
If you’re struggling with generalized anxiety disorder, it’s important to know you’re not alone. Don’t hesitate to reach out for help and learn about anxiety therapy. Not only will therapy help you better understand your anxiety, but you’ll learn even more effective techniques to manage it.
