anxiety

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

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What is GAD?
Generalized Anxiety Disorder is characterized by excessive, exaggerated anxiety and worry about everyday life events for no obvious reason. People with symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder tend to always expect disaster and can’t stop worrying about health, money, family, work, or school.

Mental Symptoms of GAD

  • Persistent worrying about things that are out of your control
  • Believing an unproportionally negative outcome of events (worst case scenario)
  • Catastrophizing 
  • Inability to relax
  • Feeling restless or on edge
  • Fear of making the wrong decision
  • Indecisiveness
  • Fear of failure, can cause excessive procrastination
    Perfectionism  

Physical Symptoms GAD

  • Exhaustion and/or trouble sleeping
  • Muscle tension and aches
  • Chronic nervousness (easily startled)
  • Irritability
  • Excessive sweating
  • Nausea or vomiting
  • Panic attacks

Using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to cope with GAD

GAD programs your brain to think in a certain way, and deeply affects your thought processes. CBT is a method of challenging those thought processes, until they are no longer influenced by GAD. A method that many find to be very useful is challenging your inner critic. Your inner critic referring to the voice in your head that tells you things like everyone is judging you, you’ll never be good enough, etc. Instead of accepting these thoughts and allowing them to affect your mental health, contradict them. (1) Identify the anxious thought. (2) Break it down into its core components. (3) Truly consider the reasoning behind this thought. (4) Come up with a list of facts that disprove the thought. The more you use this method the easier it becomes, until it is second nature; rendering these negative thoughts powerless.

When to seek medical help

  • When your worrying (anxiety) interferes with your social life, work, mental health, relationships.
  • If you feel chronically depressed or anxious
  • If you are struggling with substance use as a method of coping
  • History of other mental health concerns
  • Have suicidal thoughts or behaviours- seek help immediately (833-456-4566)

GAD Related Shame
Diagnosed or undiagnosed, having GAD can feel debilitating. It can cause you to feel like there is something innately wrong with you, and you are less than capable. This is not the case. It is estimated that over 700,000 adults in Canada struggle with GAD, it is one of the most common mental illnesses. Its effects are also as real as any other illness. For example If you had a heart condition that affected your daily life, you wouldn’t blame yourself. Do the same for GAD, it is a physical chemical imbalance in your brain, you cannot control it, you can only control how you deal with it.

Accepting GAD
It is easier said than done but the first step is accepting that you have an illness that can affect your ability to function. Then decide: what are you going to do with that information? Are you going to spiral into the negative thoughts? Or identify what parts of the illness you can control? Seek out resources. And continue being a functional happy person; because it is what you deserve. If you just went through the above thought process and chose the second option, congratulations you just practiced CBT successfully. Keep at it! Your mental health will thank you.

Post COVID-19

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What Will The New Normal Look Like?

It seems like a lifetime ago when we could freely roam about our communities without worries of catching a deadly virus. Life is certainly more unpredictable these days with the COVID-19 pandemic running its course. It used to be that we’d wake up and know fairly well how our day was going to go. We had the security of a job, a fairly good assurance of coming home without any type of virus, and a routine that helped us feel stable.

However, since COVID-19, we’re living in a world where fear and panic have risen to the surface, with many people struggling to cope each day.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), fear and panic are defined as intensified or excessive fear launched by something specific. Panic is defined as intense or paralyzing fear that tends to come on suddenly.

Life as normal changed when our everyday lives were hit with COVID-19. No longer could we wake up and use our freedom to engage in work or our communities as we pleased. No longer could we face each day with a certainty that we and our loved ones would be alright. The underlying emotion in most homes has become fear and panic.

Effects On Mental Health Workers

As a psychotherapist working in a hospital, I’ve witnessed the direct effects COVID-19 has had on health care workers. A co-worker shared with me how challenging it’s been for her to watch patients suffer alone. In one instance, she had a patient quarantined with the virus. His family was not allowed in the room to see him, so she moved his bed by the window so he could see them as he talked to them on the phone.
The grief and fear healthcare workers are carrying can become quite heavy at times. They are courageously stepping it up to care for those that fall ill, all-the-while trying to practice self-care.

COVID-19 And Generalized Anxiety

When someone experiences persistent, intense worry, it’s diagnosed as Generalized Anxiety Disorder. It could very well be that most of the world is experiencing these symptoms directly due to the pandemic.
Anxiety, fear, and panic have set the stage for communities to begin living life in a different, self-distancing, isolated way. All of us have had to change our routines and make life adjustments that we hope will keep ourselves and our families safe.

To date, statistics report that almost four million people have COVID-19 around the world. Over 265,000 have died. The tragedy of loss behind the numbers is huge. The grief that cries out around the globe monstrous. All the while, most people continue to struggle with the same questions.

  • When will this be over?
  • Will I be alright? Will my family be alright?
  • What if I get sick?
  • Will I get my job back?
  • How am I going to recover from this?
  • What will life be like after the pandemic?

Moving forward, it will be important that all of us try to cultivate a new sense of normal. A sense of stability post COVID-19.   

Preparing For Life After The Virus

Most people want to get back to work and a sense of normalcy. They’re eager to get back to a routine with some stability. Routines help us feel stable and help bring a calming to our emotions. For children, parents can help them prepare for going back to school or being at home without parents when they return to work by keeping routine and structure in place at home during the pandemic. Children tend to thrive better when there are schedules and consistency. 

For adults, practicing self-care is essential. With the excess free time we’re experiencing, be sure to fill that time with things that nurture yourself. Get plenty of sleep. Take time to exercise. Do things that you enjoy. It’s easy to let boredom in the cracks, so consciously take on each day as it comes, engaging in meaningful tasks for yourself and with your loved ones. 

Hope For Life Post COVID-19

There will be a day when the pandemic is over. Keep that in mind. People will return to work. Children will return to school or daycare. The economy will startup again. Offer gratitude for what will be once again in the near future, as well as for all the good in your life right now. Enjoy the simple things right under your nose. 

In the grand scheme of things, it is an opportune time to evaluate our values and priorities. We have some time to reflect on what’s most important to us, as well as learn valuable lessons along the way regarding health, relationships with loved ones, community, and life in general. 

Meet and Defeat Anxiety

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It’s completely okay to feel anxious from time-to-time. Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress and often a healthy reaction to emotion. It can happen in children and adults.

In most cases, feelings of anxiety come and go, only lasting a short time. Feelings of anxiety can last from a few minutes to a couple of days. Unfortunately, in other cases, the anxiety can last much longer. It can go on for weeks, months, or even years.

What is anxiety?
Impending dread senses that your brain tries to rationalize by coming up with plausible-sounding excuses as to why you need to worry (when you don’t). It can also be described as a feeling that causes your body to go on high alert and to be hypersensitive to possible dangers and in turn, it activates your fight or flight response.

Recognize anxiety
Anxiety symptoms manifest themselves differently from individual to individual. A good rule of thumb is to keep in mind of how your body reacts to anxiety. If you have experienced anxiety previously, it is important to take note of the clues that your body is giving you about your anxiety levels to help be in control of what you are feeling.

This is a list including the most common anxiety symptoms:

  • nervousness, restlessness, or being tense
  • feeling in danger
  • experiencing dread or panic
  • rapid heart rate and/or rapid breathing, or hyperventilation
  • increased sweating
  • weakness
  • difficulty concentrating or obsessive patterns
  • digestive problems
  • insomnia

Can anxiety become a disorder?
The short answer is yes. If your anxiety lingers and persists to stay in your life until it begins to interfere with your daily activities such as family life, work, school. Thankfully, anxiety is a common, treatable, and most importantly manageable condition.

How to cope with anxiety with the help of strategies and tools
If you are feeling overwhelmed, try these tricks:

  • Get enough sleep each night.
  • Limit alcohol and caffeine intake, especially before sleep.
  • Take deep breaths and slowly count to ten. It stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which is responsible for activities that occur when our body is at rest. 
  • Talk to someone that can and wants to listen, such as a friend or close family member.
  • See a therapist who is trained in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
  • Understand the difference between hypothetical worry vs practical worry


How to react during a panic attack
A panic attack is the result of an overload of anxiety, it is a sudden onset of fear or distress that peaks in within a handful of minutes. There are five steps that you can take to try to manage a panic attack “AWARE”.

Acknowledge & Accept:
Take a moment to acknowledge and accept: that you are not in real danger and accept your feelings as you would a minor headache. It’s a passing feeling and you will feel better.

Wait:
If you have the urge to leave the situation, give yourself a moment to process what you are feeling. Do not rob yourself of the option to leave but do try to keep yourself in control. Remember to count to ten before taking any decision as panic attacks often rob us of our ability to think rationally.

Actions (to make myself more comfortable):
Every panic attack ends no matter what you do. Even when you have the thoughts that it will last forever, it still ends because everything ends. Your job is to ensure that you are as comfortable as possible.

Repeat:
Sometimes as soon as you end a panic attack, you can enter another one. In the case of a relapse, go through the steps again as often as necessary. Just take it from the top of the list again. You can make it through a second panic attack, just like you have through your first one.

End:
This step simply is here to remind you that the panic attack does eventually end, even if it comes in cycles or if you relapse at a later date. Do not pressure yourself to accelerate the panic attack or to suppress it, your only concern should be to feel comfortable and to “wait it out”.