Chapter 1

Analyzing and Attacking Anxiety

IN THIS CHAPTER

Growing by leaps and bounds: Anxiety’s proliferation

Paying the tab for anxiety

Understanding anxiety symptoms

Getting the help you need

Stroll down the street and about one in four of the people you walk by has significant problems with anxiety. And almost half of the people you encounter will struggle with anxiety to one degree or another. The rate of anxiety across the world has climbed for many decades, and no end is in sight.

The whole world watches on edge as disasters, terrorism, financial collapse, pandemics, social unrest, crime, and war threaten the security of home and family. Anxiety creates havoc in the home, destroys relationships, erodes health, causes employees to lose time from work, and prevents people from living full, productive lives.

In this chapter, you find out how to recognize the signs and symptoms of anxiety. We clarify the costs of anxiety — both personal and societal. We provide a brief overview of the treatments presented in greater detail in later chapters. You also get a glimpse of how to help if someone you care about or your child has anxiety. If you worry too much, or care for someone who has serious problems with anxiety, this book is here to help!

Anxiety: Everybody’s Doing It

Anxiety involves feelings of uneasiness, worry, apprehension, and/or fear, and it’s the most common of all the emotional disorders. In other words, you definitely aren’t alone if you have unwanted anxiety. And the numbers have grown over the years. At no time in history has anxiety tormented more people than it does today. Why?

Life has always been menacing. But today people around the world are glued to screens watching the latest horrors in real time. News feeds, blogs, tweets, newsprint, and social media chronicle crime, war, disease, discrimination, and corruption. The media’s portrayal of these modern plagues includes full-color images with unprecedented, graphic clarity.

In addition, recurring financial crises rock the fragile stability of the poor as well as the middle class. The lack of basic necessities like food, shelter, education, healthcare, clean water, and sanitation endanger many lives throughout the world. No wonder anxiety is its own worldwide pandemic.

Unfortunately, as stressful and anxiety-arousing as the world is today, only a minority of those suffering from anxiety seek professional treatment. That’s a problem, because anxiety causes not only emotional pain and distress but also physical strain and even death, given that anxiety extracts a serious toll on the body and sometimes even contributes to suicide. Furthermore, anxiety costs society as a whole, to the tune of billions of dollars.

When people talk about what anxiety feels like, you may hear any or all of the following descriptions:

• When my panic attacks begin, I feel tightness in my chest. It’s as though I’m drowning or suffocating, and I begin to sweat; the fear is overwhelming. I feel like I’m going to die, and I have to sit down because I may faint.
• I’ve always been painfully shy. I want friends, but I’m too embarrassed to call anyone. I guess I feel like anyone I call will think I’m not worth talking to. I feel really lonely, but I can’t even think about reaching out. It’s just too risky.
• I wake with worry every day, even on the weekends. Ever since I lost my job, I worry all the time. Sometimes, when it’s really bad, I feel like I’m going crazy, and I can’t even sleep.
• I’m so afraid of everything that I can barely leave the house. I’ve stopped even looking for jobs. My family has to bring me groceries.

As you can see, anxiety results in all sorts of thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. When your anxiety begins to interfere with day-to-day life, you need to find ways to put your fears and worries at ease.

Tabulating the Costs of Anxiety

Anxiety costs. It costs the sufferer in emotional, physical, and financial terms. But it doesn’t stop there. Anxiety also incurs a financial burden for everyone. Stress, worry, and anxiety disrupt relationships, work, and family.

What does anxiety cost you?

Obviously, if you have a problem with anxiety, you experience the cost of distressed, anxious feelings. Anxiety feels lousy. You don’t need to read a book to know that. But did you know that untreated anxiety runs up a tab in other ways as well? These costs include

• A physical toll: Higher blood pressure, tension headaches, and gastrointestinal symptoms can affect your body. In fact, recent research found that certain types of chronic anxiety disorders change the makeup of your brain’s structures.
• A toll on your kids: Parents with anxiety more often have anxious children. This is due in part to genetics, but it’s also because kids learn from observation. Anxious kids may be so stressed that they can’t pay attention in school.
• Fat: Anxiety and stress increase the stress hormone known as cortisol. Cortisol causes fat storage in the abdominal area, thus increasing the risk of heart disease and stroke. Stress also leads to increased eating.
• More trips to the doctor: That’s because those with anxiety frequently experience worrisome physical symptoms. In addition, anxious people often worry a great deal about their health.
• Relationship problems: People with anxiety frequently feel irritable. Sometimes, they withdraw emotionally or do the opposite and dependently cling to their partners.
• Downtime: Those with anxiety disorders miss work more often than other people, usually as an effort to temporarily quell their distress.

The cost to society

Anxiety costs hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide each year. Most of the cost is due to loss of productivity. Decreased productivity is sometimes due to health problems made worse by anxiety. But the financial loss from downtime and healthcare costs doesn’t include the dollars lost to substance abuse, which many of those with anxiety disorders turn to in order to deal with their anxiety. Thus, directly and indirectly, anxiety extracts a colossal toll on both the person who experiences it and society at large.

Recognizing the Symptoms of Anxiety

You may not know if you suffer from problematic anxiety. That’s because anxiety involves a wide range of symptoms. Each person experiences a slightly different constellation of these symptoms. For now, you should know that some signs of anxiety appear in the form of thoughts or beliefs. Other indications of anxiety manifest themselves in bodily sensations. Still other symptoms show up in various kinds of anxious behaviors. Some people experience anxiety signs in all three ways, while others only perceive their anxiety in one or two areas.

Thinking anxiously

Folks with anxiety generally think in ways that differ from the ways that other people think. You’re probably thinking anxiously if you experience:

• Approval addiction: If you’re an approval addict, you worry a great deal about what other people think about you.
• Living in the future and predicting the worst: When you do this, you think about everything that lies ahead and assume the worst possible outcome.
• Dependency: Some people believe they must have help from others and are unable to achieve on their own.
• Perfectionism: If you’re a perfectionist, you assume that any mistake means total failure.
• Poor concentration: Anxious people routinely report that they struggle with focusing their thoughts. Short-term memory sometimes suffers as well.
• Racing thoughts: Thoughts zip through your mind in a stream of almost uncontrollable worry and concern.

We discuss anxious thinking in great detail in Chapters 5, 6, and 7.

Behaving anxiously

We have three words to describe anxious behavior — avoidance, avoidance, and avoidance. Anxious people inevitably attempt to stay away from the things that make them anxious. Whether it’s snakes, heights, crowds, freeways, parties, paying bills, reminders of bad times, or public speaking, anxious...