An anxiety disorder is fear or worry that doesn’t fade when the stressful moment passes. It hangs around for weeks or months, it’s out of proportion to what’s actually happening, and it starts shaping your life: what you avoid, how you sleep, whether you can get through a workday. Everyone gets anxious. An anxiety disorder is when the anxiety starts running things.
There are several types, and they look different from each other. Knowing which one you’re dealing with makes it a lot easier to get the right help.
What Is an Anxiety Disorder?
Normal anxiety is useful. It gets you to study for the test or check the stove twice. An anxiety disorder takes that same alarm system and leaves it stuck in the on position. Your body acts like there’s danger (racing heart, tight chest, shallow breathing, upset stomach) even when there isn’t any.
The good news is that anxiety disorders are very treatable. According to MedlinePlus, the main treatments are talk therapy, medicine, or both.
The Main Types of Anxiety Disorders
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)
GAD is worry that never takes a day off. People with GAD worry about ordinary things like health, money, work and family, but far more than the situation calls for. MedlinePlus describes it as worry on most days for at least six months.
Day to day, it looks like lying awake running through every way tomorrow could go wrong. You feel restless and tired at once, your shoulders ache, and you can’t focus because your mind keeps jumping to the next thing.
Panic disorder
Panic disorder means repeated panic attacks: sudden waves of intense fear with no real danger. A pounding heart, chest pain, shaking, dizziness, a feeling that you’re choking or dying. Attacks often peak within minutes. Plenty of people end up in the emergency room the first time, sure it’s a heart attack.
The attacks are only half of it. People start organizing their lives around avoiding the next one, skipping the grocery store, the freeway, the crowded church service.
Social anxiety disorder
This is an intense fear of being watched, judged or embarrassed. It goes well past shyness. Someone with social anxiety might rehearse a two-line phone call for an hour, eat lunch in the car to avoid the break room, or turn down a promotion because it means speaking in meetings.
Specific phobias
A phobia is an intense fear of something that poses little or no real danger: heights, flying, needles, dogs, enclosed spaces. The person usually knows the fear is bigger than the threat. That knowledge doesn’t make it go away.
Separation anxiety disorder
Most people think of this as a childhood problem, but adults can have it too. It’s an overwhelming fear of being apart from the people you’re attached to, often with constant worry that something terrible will happen to them.
Related Conditions: OCD and PTSD
Older articles (including the earlier version of this one) list obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder as anxiety disorders. Current diagnostic guidelines put them in their own categories, though both involve a lot of anxiety.
- OCD involves unwanted, intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive actions or mental rituals (compulsions) a person feels driven to do to ease the distress.
- PTSD develops after a traumatic event and includes flashbacks or nightmares, avoidance of reminders, feeling constantly on edge, and changes in mood and beliefs. Our post on PTSD and addiction covers how closely it’s tied to substance use.
How Anxiety Affects Everyday Life
Untreated anxiety tends to shrink a person’s world. First you skip the party. Then the work dinner. Then you’re calling in sick on the days that feel too heavy. Relationships suffer because the anxious person cancels a lot, needs a lot of reassurance, or gets irritable when they’re overwhelmed.
Bodies suffer too. Months of poor sleep, muscle tension, headaches and stomach trouble add up. Many people with anxiety disorders also end up with depression.
Anxiety Disorders and Alcohol or Drug Use
Here’s where anxiety gets dangerous. Alcohol works fast on anxiety. One drink, and the chest loosens. A benzodiazepine prescribed for panic can feel like a miracle the first few times. It makes sense that so many anxious people end up leaning on a substance.
The relief doesn’t last. As alcohol wears off, anxiety rebounds, often worse than before, so the next drink comes sooner. Over time, tolerance builds and withdrawal itself causes anxiety. The person is now treating the anxiety the drinking caused. According to NIDA, substance use disorders frequently occur alongside anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder and PTSD.
If you’ve been using alcohol or pills to manage anxiety, don’t stop suddenly on your own. Withdrawal from alcohol and benzodiazepines can be dangerous and can include seizures. Talk to a doctor or a detox program first.
Our post on self-medicating with drugs and alcohol walks through that cycle in more detail.
Treatment for Anxiety Disorders
Cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the most widely used treatments. It teaches you to spot anxious thinking, test it against reality, and gradually face what you’ve been avoiding, often through exposure therapy. Medication helps many people, especially certain antidepressants. Support groups, regular exercise, decent sleep and cutting back on caffeine all help too.
For people of faith, prayer and Scripture can be a real comfort alongside treatment. “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” (Philippians 4:6, KJV). That verse isn’t a scolding for feeling anxious. It’s an invitation to bring the worry somewhere.
When Anxiety and Addiction Happen Together: Covenant Hills
If anxiety and drinking or drug use have become tangled together, they need to be treated together. Covenant Hills offers co-occurring disorders treatment with psychiatric care, medication management and individual therapy, in either a faith-based or traditional track. We treat the anxiety and the addiction side by side, so one doesn’t keep pulling the other back.
To talk through your options, call 800-662-2873 for a free, confidential assessment.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the main types of anxiety disorders?
The main types are generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, specific phobias and separation anxiety disorder. OCD and PTSD are closely related but are now classified separately.
How do I know if my anxiety is a disorder?
Look at how long it’s lasted, how intense it is compared to the situation, and whether it’s getting in the way of work, relationships or sleep. If it is, a doctor or therapist can help sort out what’s going on.
Can drinking make anxiety worse?
Yes. Alcohol can ease anxiety briefly, but anxiety often rebounds as it wears off, and regular heavy drinking tends to make anxiety worse over time. Don’t stop heavy drinking abruptly without medical advice.
Can anxiety disorders be treated?
Yes. Talk therapy such as CBT, medication, or a combination helps most people. If substance use is part of the picture, treating both at once gives the best chance at lasting change.
