The following description of Dylan’s life is a prime picture of what someone with a specific phobia goes through.
Dylan trudges up eight flights of stairs each morning to get to his office and tells everyone that he loves the exercise. When Dylan passes the elevators on the way to the stairwell, his heart pounds, and he feels a sense of doom. Dylan envisions being boxed inside the elevator — the doors slide shut, and there’s no escape. In his mind, the elevator box rises on rusty cables, makes sudden jerks up and down, falls freely, and crashes into the basement.
Dylan has never experienced anything like his fantasy, nor has anyone he knows had this experience. Dylan has never liked elevators, but he didn’t start avoiding them until the past few years. It seems that the longer he stays away from riding them, the stronger his fear grows. He used to feel okay on escalators, but now he finds himself avoiding those as well. Several weeks ago at the airport, he had no alternative but to take the escalator. He managed to get on but became so frightened that he had to sit down for a while after he reached the second floor.
One afternoon, Dylan rushed down the stairs after work, running late for an appointment. He slipped and fell, breaking his leg. Now in a cast, Dylan faces the challenge of his life — with a broken leg, he now must take the elevator to get to his office. Dylan has a phobia.
Dylan’s story illustrates how a phobia often starts out small and spreads. Such phobias gradually grow and affect one’s life increasingly over time.
Rare symptoms of anxiety in adults
A couple of anxiety symptoms that usually occur in children sometimes follow into adulthood. As with other symptom clusters of anxiety, they often manifest themselves along with some degree of worry, panic, social fears, and so on. Two interesting though rare disorders include
Separation anxiety disorder: People who feel terrified that someone they love will be killed, kidnapped, injured, or die from an illness and as a result, refuse to be separated from their loved one. When separated, they often feel panic, extreme distress, and despair. The technical diagnosis is called separation anxiety disorder.
Selective mutism: Although this pattern usually begins in childhood, some adults are almost unable to speak in a variety of anxiety-arousing situations. They may neglect to say basics like “thank you” or “hello,” not because of rudeness, but because of extreme fear. This form of anxiety can cause massive social and occupational limitations. This form of anxiety is technically known as selective mutism.
Anxiety symptoms can also be a direct consequence of certain medical conditions. Common conditions that can lead to significant anxious feelings include endocrine disorders; heart problems, especially arrhythmia; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); and certain disorders of the brain.
WHAT DO PEOPLE FEAR?
Various polls and surveys collect information about what people fear most. The following list is our compilation of the most common fears. Do you have any of these?
Dogs
The dark
Public speaking
Heights
Drowning
The dentist
Thunder and lightning
Strangers
Small, enclosed places
Clowns, ghosts, and zombies
Flying
Blood and needles
Bugs, snakes, and other creepy crawlers
How Anxiety Differs from Other Emotional Disorders
Anxious symptoms sometimes travel with other company. Thus, you may have anxiety along with other emotional disorders. In fact, about half of those with anxiety disorders develop depression, especially if their anxiety goes untreated. Recognizing the difference between anxiety and other emotional problems is important because the treatments differ somewhat.
Obsessive compulsive disorder: A person with OCD may exhibit behaviors that include an obsession, a compulsion, or both. Obsessions are unwelcome, disturbing, and repetitive images, impulses, or thoughts that jump into the mind. Most people who have OCD know that their obsessions are not entirely realistic but can’t seem to stop believing them. Compulsions are repetitive actions or mental strategies carried out to temporarily reduce anxiety or distress. Sometimes, an obsessive thought causes the anxiety; at other times, the anxiety relates to some feared event or situation that triggers the compulsion.OCD used to be considered an anxiety disorder. Although OCD certainly involves some anxiety, recent research indicates that it affects different parts of the brain than anxiety. OCD also entails problems with impulsivity that are less common in anxiety.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): You may have PTSD if you experience or witness an event that you perceive as life-threatening, causing serious injury, or sexual violence, and you feel terror, horror, or helplessness. You may also get PTSD from being a first responder witnessing trauma or by being close to someone who has been traumatized. You relive the event through flashbacks or memories. You try to avoid reminders of the event. Your thoughts and moods may be bleak, irritable, and easily triggered.PTSD used to be considered an anxiety disorder. It was moved into a category of trauma disorders. Although PTSD does usually include anxiety symptoms, it also frequently is accompanied by anger, self-destructive behavior, and feelings of unreality.
Depression: Depression can feel like life in slow motion. You lose interest in activities that used to bring you pleasure. You feel sad. Most likely, you feel tired, and you sleep fitfully. Your appetite may wane, and your sex drive may droop. Similar to anxiety, you may find it difficult to concentrate or plan ahead. But unlike anxiety, depression saps your drive and motivation. For more information, see our book Depression For Dummies (Wiley).
Bipolar disorder: If you have bipolar disorder, you seesaw between ups and downs. At times, you feel that you’re on top of the world. You believe your ideas are unusually important and need little sleep for days at a time. You may feel more special than other people. You may invest in risky schemes, shop recklessly, engage in sexual escapades, or lose your good judgment in other ways. You may start working frantically on important projects or find ideas streaming through your mind. Then suddenly you crash and burn. Your mood turns sour and depression sets in. (Check out Bipolar Disorder For Dummies by Candida Fink, MD, and Joe Kraynak [Wiley] for more about this disorder.)
Psychosis: Not only may psychosis make you feel anxious, but the symptoms also profoundly disrupt your life. Psychosis weaves hallucinations into everyday life. For example, some people hear voices talking to them or see shadowy figures when no one is around. Delusions, another feature of psychosis, also distort reality. Common psychotic delusions include believing that the CIA or aliens are tracking your whereabouts. Other delusions involve grandiose, exaggerated beliefs, such as thinking you’re Jesus Christ or that you have a special mission to save the world. If you think you hear the phone ringing when you’re drying your hair or in the shower, only to discover that it wasn’t, you’re not psychotic. Most people occasionally hear or see trivial things that aren’t there. Psychosis becomes a concern only when these perceptions seriously depart from reality. Fortunately, anxiety disorders don’t lead to psychosis.
Substance abuse: When people develop a dependency on drugs or alcohol, withdrawal may create serious