Hey everyone!
This week's video topic comes to me
from you and all of your requests.
Anxiety disorders: What are they
and what do we do?
so stay tuned
so like I said this week's
topic is anxiety disorders
and after getting that
request from many of you
and then looking through the dsm
what actually falls under anxiety disorder
what is that criteria
there are a lot and
a couple of them i've already touched on
and a couple of them
i will touch on in future videos
but one is PTSD and
that is in a video that i did
probably about two months ago or so
so check out my PTSD video for questions
and you know comments about that
but another one i've had requested is OCD
which also falls under anxiety disorders
and that's Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
and I will do a video
on that at a later time
so don't forget to
subscribe to my channel
cause when i put it out
you're gonna want to know
so the first thing I want to
touch on and I have my dsm here
my handy dandy dsm
and just to try to make
this as clear as possible
the first part of anxiety disorders
that I want to talk about
wow that was a mouthful anxiety disorders
is generalized anxiety disorder
or GAD which i will call it
from now on cause
that makes it so much easier
so GAD is an excessive anxiety
and worry occurring
more days than not
for a period of at least 6 months
and I guess the best way that
I can think of this presenting itself
in my office is when I have a patient
who all they do is worry about.. let's see
what people think of them.
and that happens a lot
obviously this cannot otherwise be
attributed to an eating disorder
or something like that
if someone just has anxiety
over something else that
can be accounted for in another diagnosis
it's not GAD but
when I have people who have GAD
it's almost like they worry so much about
everything in their life like
I don't wanna be late for this
and what if i don't get
100% on that test
and oh my gosh and
my apartment isn't clean
and my friends are coming over i mean
everything is excessive worry
and the way that I
always think excessive is is that
it's more intense of a worry
than the actual situation warrants so
i know that sounds like therapy talk
and it's kind of annoying
but what i mean is like for me
if people are coming over to my house
and my house isn't really clean
i'd be like well when i get home
i'll tidy up as quick as i can
and let it be what it be, right?
Cause they're my friends and
they'll love me anyway
so that would be a normal quote unquote
normal relative worry
where you're like ugh it's dirty
but i need to clean it
and then you're over it right
oh i'll just do this
but a person with GAD can't really do that
they will excessively worry
about it so much that
it could ruin their day
they might wanna try to leave work early
and they may even like
hurt other's feelings
or do other things that are bad
for them in order to
alleviate this worry okay?
so that's gad generalized anxiety disorder
and as with all of the things that i talk about
i mean anxiety disorders have at least like i don't know
like 50 pages in the dsm so this is a very succinct version
now the next thing i wanna talk about is social phobia
now many of you talk about having social anxiety
and from what i can read in the dsm
social anxieyt isn't actually a diagnosis
under the anxiety disorders it would be called social phobia
and they say that the essential feature of social phobia
is a marked and persistent fear of social or performance
situations in which embarrassment may occur
now i find this to be most prevalent with my teen clients
and my young adult clients the ones in college and stuff
because we're in social situations a lot and it can be very
like we may be in a new high school and we're already
nervous and so then we start to worry about what
everybody thinks and we don't want to be embarrassed
and we don't want to embarrass ourselves
and oh that person's giggling uh they're giggling about me
and that's kind of how this presents itself
we think that a lot of times anybody that's giggling
or looking or somebody is pointing we automatically
think that they're talking about us we're doing something
embarrassing and it's terrible so that's kind of what
social phobia is and under social phobia it says
social anxiety disorder so that's kind of
where that falls and that is something that i honestly
along with all the anxiety disorders it's really important
that we go to therapy and we talk about this with someone
and we kind of process it through and in my experience
CBT cognitive behavioral therapy is the best with this
because we'll do what we call downward i think it's actually
technically downward arrow questioning where
we try to logically talk ourselves out of these you know
kind of anxiety provoking situations like okay well
there are 700 people in the cafeteria today
what are the chances of that person laughing
is laughing about us, well 1 in 700, well is that really
you know a high risk situation? is it most likely that they're
thinking and laughing about me or is it less likely that they're
thinking and laughing at me? well it's probably less likely
and we kind of talk ourselves out of it
so if you suffer from social anxiety or social phobia
and you're wondering what to do about it
i would look into seeing a CBT therapist okay?
so that's just a little tip and then
what is agoraphobia everybody talks about that too, right?
and that falls under this as well now agoraphobia
differs from social anxiety or social phobia in that
it doesn't have to do with social situations
it's not relational it's not like well that girl is pointing at me
and she's being really mean or that guy was whispering
and i know he was whispering about me it's not relational
with those kinds of people it is all to do with us getting into
a situation which usually is social or is just out of our house
out of our comfort zone so we may be safe at home
we may be safe at work anything else not safe
and our main concern is that we'll get somewhere and
we can't leave either we can't leave easily
or without embarrassment and that's our biggest worry
it's like i'm gonna get somewhere and i'm gonna start to
feel overwhelmed and then i won't be able to leave
or i'll have to embarrass myself in front of people to leave
because i'll be stuck you know like i'm in the middle seat
in this opera and i'm gonna have to get up and disturb
all these people it's gonna be really embarrassing for me
so that's kind of more what agoraphobia is versus
social anxiety so social anxiety is more relational
agoraphobia is just like situational if that makes sense
that's kind of in my mind how if i had my white board
i would draw a line and i would break them down like that
so that is that then there are panic attacks and panic disorder
now panic attacks i know many of you have said that
you've had them and that you have them a lot
and they're really overwhelming and that's the truth
they really suck and they're terrible and they not only
come on quickly but once we have them
then we always worry that we're going to
have more of them and the symptoms of panic attacks
can be they say somatic or cognitive in nature so it can be
like heart palpitations i can be sweating i can be trembling
i can be shaking the most common thing i hear
in my practice is i feel like i'm drowning and i think that's
because we have those heart palpitations and we
don't breathe very well and we feel like we're drowning
and so these will happen usually in ten minutes or less
and you can have a panic attack but only if
and i want to make sure i say this correctly
only if we have recurrent and unexpected panic attacks
followed by at least a month of worry that we're going to
have another do we have panic disorder okay?
so that's how those differentiate because
panic attacks can happen and some of us with
generalized anxiety disorder may have a panic attack
every once in a while when we're put in a really
stressful situation but unless we have them recurrent
and we worry about them all the time we don't have
panic disorder we would have generalized anxiety disorder
or agoraphobia with panic attacks okay? so that's how
those are differentiated and just to give you an idea
of how many other things are included under anxiety
disorders we have panic disorder without agoraphobia
panic disorder with agoraphobia so you can see how
all of these can be attached on to one another
with or without so that's why i just gave you you know
those most common and what i hear most from you and
what you wanted me to talk about so that is
an umbrella view in the most common panic related
and anxiety related disorders and different attacks
that we can have okay? so now what the heck do we do?
well the first thing is i would definitely see a therapist
and i would also look into seeing your doctor your gp or
your psychiatrist because of the physical things that can
come up when we have anxiety and we want to make sure
that not only that our physical health is under control
and managed but we also want to make sure that
our anxiety isn't causing any damage to anything
i mean i've had a client who had a little heart valve issue
because of all the panic attacks and the breathing
and i mean she had a predisposition to that before
but you just want to make sure that everything is okay
and that these aren't being caused by a medical condition
and that's really important that's something that i don't think
i mention enough is when we think we have a certain
mental disorder that's why we need to go to our
primary care doctor always because we want to make sure
that it can't be attributed to something else because a lot
of people will diagnose us and they'll be wrong
and it's not because they're not good clinicians
there's just a lot to factor in and i want to make sure that
we know that this is not being caused by something else
and if we cannot get these things under control
and our panic attacks potentially are making school
really hard or we could potentially lose our job
and things like that we want to make sure that if
we need medication they can give us that and
they can help us out and a CBT therapist
or just a regular talk therapist can really really help
as we figure out where this came from why we're doing it
and we can kind of talk ourselves out like i talked
that downward arrow questioning and it can sometimes
help us out of that so make sure to take a look at that
don't forget to subscribe to my channel cuz i will do a video
on OCD that will be coming up really soon so stay tuned
for that and like i said i already did a video on PTSD
and i've done some videos on anxiety 101 and
breathing techniques cus those can help sometimes
when we feel our anxiety building and so i would take a look
at those and check those out and don't forget to leave
your comments below i know many of you so many of you
struggle with this and you've asked me to do this video
so please leave your comments if there are other things
you want me to talk about if you have tips and tricks
and things that work for you please share them
oru community is amazing and it's growing and you're all
helping each other and i love to watch it to be honest
it's very exciting so keep working with me
keep helping one another
as we work towards a healthy mind and a healthy body
okay good yeah i'm overheating
overheating
if i was like a little thermometer i'd be like {boop}
the little steam would be coming out and the little
red light would be flashing okay time to get outside
do something fun yeah yeah
maybe get a tan because i am like a ghost yeah