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.
THE HEARTBREAK OF ANXIETY
Cardiovascular disease stands as the number one cause of death throughout the world. And research has demonstrated that chronic anxiety is a major contributor to poor cardiac health. So, early diagnosis and treatment for anxiety may help prevent some heart disease.
When patients are diagnosed with heart disease, anxiety often increases, even among people without a history of anxiety. Numerous studies have shown that untreated anxiety among cardiac patients is linked to poorer outcomes. These poor outcomes include recurrent cardiac events and even higher rates of death.
Therefore, it’s been recommended that all cardiac patients should be assessed for the presence of problems with anxiety. Since anxiety can be successfully treated, it makes sense to include evaluation and treatment for anxiety when it occurs in cardiac patients. Such interventions are likely to alleviate anxiety as well as contribute to improved cardiovascular health, but further research is needed to firmly establish this relationship.
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 people search for ways out.
In the short run, avoidance lowers anxiety. It makes you feel a little better. However, in the long run, avoidance actually maintains and heightens anxiety. We give you ways of confronting avoidance in Chapter 9.
One of the most common and obvious examples of anxiety-induced avoidance is how people react to their phobias. Have you ever seen the response of a spider phobic when confronting one of the critters? Usually, such folks scream, jump, and hastily retreat.
Finding anxiety in your body
Almost all people with severe anxiety experience a range of physical effects. These sensations don’t simply occur in your head; they’re as real as this book you’re holding. The responses to anxiety vary considerably