Most people understand what anxiety is. Everyone experiences situational anxiety, for example, when anticipating something unpleasant like a major test or surgery. But an anxiety disorder is a mental health diagnosis that affects approximately 40 million adults in the US. An anxiety disorder treatment program, where medication and therapy can help manage someone’s symptoms, is the best option for some with this diagnosis.
To learn more about the anxiety disorder treatment program available at TruHealing Centers, give us a call at [Direct] or fill out our online form. We can help you with treatment options for your anxiety and also address a co-occurring addiction if there is one.
Anxiety Disorders
Those who do not suffer from an anxiety disorder are often surprised to learn what it entails. Normal anxiety occurs around a specific event and feels like worry or dread and lessens on its own after the event or talking to someone reassuring. The medical diagnosis of anxiety disorder encompasses similar feelings of worry, dread, and stress, but they can become crippling, and the victim is powerless to control or prevent these symptoms.
An anxiety disorder is often debilitating, controlling someone’s life and limiting the options available to them. Someone who is a nervous flyer can eventually figure out how to fly. Someone with an anxiety disorder may simply never fly. Lives can be derailed when anxiety prevents someone from meeting basic obligations, despite their best intentions. They cannot be admonished or comforted out of their anxiety any more than someone with diabetes can be “fixed” by the good intentions of friends who say, “Just try to get over it.” The lives of anxiety disorder sufferers are often very curtailed by their condition.
Symptoms of Anxiety
There are several kinds of anxiety, including:
- Generalized anxiety disorders in which sufferers cannot shake the crippling worry and stress sparked by everyday issues, even when there is no tangible reason. Thus their job, relationships, health, even the fact that they have anxiety will cause these sufferers to worry beyond what is tolerable. One person described it as “worrying in advance about things that probably won’t even happen.”
- Social anxiety disorders afflict a very large number of Americans—over 10%–and involve fear of being judged by others, embarrassing themselves in public, or otherwise becoming overwhelmed in any social situation. Being forced into social encounters does not help these people and can, in fact, be deeply traumatic.
- Panic disorders create even more severe symptoms and can co-occur with generalized or social anxiety disorders.
Common symptoms of anxiety include:
- Tachycardia/elevated heart rate
- Irritability and feeling on edge
- Excessive nervousness
- Feelings of imminent doom
- Increased heart rate/tachycardia
- Rapid breathing
- Trembling
- Excessive sweating (flop sweat)
- Sleep difficulties
- Stomach and digestive issues
Anxiety and Addiction
Anxiety and addiction frequently co-occur. That’s because it is common for people who suffer from an anxiety disorder to self-medicate, easing their discomfort, inhibitions, and the chronically present stress hormones that can be so exhausting.
If you suffer from anxiety and choose to use drugs or alcohol to mute your symptoms, you likely won’t have the perspective or insight to know your limits. The side-effects of addiction are even more damaging to the brain and body systems than anxiety, so someone who cycles between anxiety and intoxication is creating more problems than ever. These cycles won’t end without professional support best provided in professional rehab, preferably one with an anxiety treatment program.
Anxiety Treatment at TruHealing Centers
Recovery for someone with co-occurring disorders of anxiety and addiction is possible with proper treatment at a treatment center where medical and therapeutic staff fully understand anxiety and how it intersects with substance abuse.
At TruHealing Centers, we use numerous therapy programs to help people with anxiety disorders, including:
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy
- Dialectical behavior therapy
- Trauma therapy
- Individual therapy
- Group therapy
- Substance abuse programs for the whole range of addictions
Treat Both Anxiety and Addiction at TruHealing Centers
Our TruHealing Centers team is here for you. Begin healing from anxiety and addiction by calling [Direct] or completing our easy online form. We are ready to help, but the first step is up to you.
