The 7 Main Types of Anxiety

Anxiety is not a simple, isolated condition. It can manifest in different forms, and cause hundreds of symptoms… both on physical and psychological levels: anything from choking sensations, to heart palpitations, excessive sweating and trembling, nausea and dizziness, irrational fears, compulsive worrying and having feelings of eminent doom – those are just some examples of the destructive effects of anxiety disorders.

If you’re looking to improve your understanding of what anxiety disorders really are, you should know about the different types of known anxiety. According to the latest scientific interpretations, there are seven major categories of anxiety disorders:

1. Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
2. Social Phobia
3. Panic Disorder
4. Agoraphobia
5. Specific Phobia
6. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
7. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

The purpose of this article is describing the most common signs and indicators related with each category of anxiety disorder, so you can compare with your own experience. This information is just meant for your reference, not self-diagnosis.

Only a mental health professional is fully qualified to put a label on your sickness, if that’s what you’re looking for. Although in our opinion, putting labels on anxiety isn’t too important; what’s important is that you manage to deal with your inner troubles on your own, using natural methods.

Regardless of which type of anxiety disorder you’re dealing with, all anxiousness can be vanquished by following similar strategies: accepting you have it, understanding its causes, and breaking them down in smaller pieces that you can manage.

1: Generalized Anxiety Disorder

This is the commonest, most widespread form of anxiety (therefore its designation). Also known as GAD, generalized anxiety disorders affects tens of millions of people throughout the world; it’s usually defined as an on-going state tension over something ephemeral or unrealistic.

In other words, if you’re always worried about nothing in specific, or something that makes no sense being worried about, this is probably your type of anxiety disorder. Remember, anxiety is a natural part of life; it’s normal for anyone to experience this feeling occasionally, but normally for a valid reason. If you feel anxiety every day for no reason in particular, you probably have an anxiety disorder.

The following problems are extremely common and recurrent in people suffering from GAD:

• Constant restlessness, irritation, edginess, lack of self-control.
• Lethargy and low energy levels; being tired too easily.
• Tense and uptight muscles, especially on the back, shoulders and neck.
• Difficulties with concentrating, reasoning and sleeping.
• Obsessing over inexplicable symptoms lacking a physical cause.

2: Social Phobia

This is the typical anxiety disorder in people with fear of crowds, public embarrassment, and any kind of public scrutiny. In extreme cases, the patients may have problems with something as normal as eating in public, interacting with people they don’t know or authority figures, going to parties or waiting in line.

People suffering from social phobia perceive public situations as being potentially painful and distressing; they live in constant fear of being judged, observed and remarked upon. It’s also very common for a social phobic to have an irrational fear of doing something stupid and embarrassing.

There’s a clear difference between a shy person and someone suffering from social phobia. If you’re having trouble socializing in your new job and neighborhood, maybe you’re just shy. On the other hand, you likely have social phobia if you have experienced two of the following symptoms for more than 6 months:

• Being hopelessly fearful of unfamiliar situations and people; getting obsessed about being watched, observed and judged by strangers, to the point you absolutely avoid placing yourself in such a position.
• Feeling overwhelmed by anxiety when forced into a social situation, and being unable to deal with it. Not everyone can make a good public speech, but anyone can try to… unless people suffering from social phobias.
• Despite knowing that your fear is irrational and disproportionate to the situations you’re faced with, you can’t seem to do anything about it. You never get to meet new people, and you’re pushing yourself further into isolation.

3: Panic Disorder

In a fast-paced modern society such as our own, everybody is bound to feel scared and confused, every now and then… but this kind of normal panic usually has valid reasons and real consequences.

For example: if you don’t meet your deadline, you may lose your job. If you lose your job, you may end up homeless. Those are somewhat valid reasons to feel panic.

But if you’re always either feeling intense panic without knowing the actual reason, or if you’re always worrying because you might start feeling panic at any moment, you likely have this type of anxiety disorder.

If you ever have a panic attack (we hope you never do), you won’t have problems recognizing it. Some indicators of an upcoming panic attack include:

• Heart palpitations, irregular and fast-paced heart rhythms
• Excessive sweating and perspiration, regardless of weather
• Hot or cold flashes with no apparent reason
• Numbness or tingling sensations throughout the body
• Overwhelming and sudden fear of death
• Vertigo, dizziness, and lightheadedness
• Feelings of doom, fear of going insane or losing control
• Stomach cramps, sudden digestive problems and discomforts

There are many other signs you may be about to have a panic attack, and you should draw from your experience and learn to recognize these signs. You can sometimes avoid having a panic attack if you use the right techniques (such as deep breathing exercises) at the onset of panic.

4: Agoraphobia

If you feel terrified of open spaces and public scenarios, this is probably the category of anxiety disorders you fit most accurately. Although, many people who have this problem also have panic disorders; keep in mind that many anxiety sufferers actually fall in more than one of these categories.

This type of phobia usually manifests in adulthood, unlike most other phobias which seem to manifest from early childhood. People suffering from agoraphobia don’t just have problems with being in open spaces; usually, they’re terrified of losing control (both psychologically and physically) in a social scenario from which they won’t be able to escape. Common indicators of this disorder include:

• Obsessive fear of integrating groups of people, regardless of whether or not you know them
• Being preoccupied whenever you’re in an environment other than your home, or any environment that you can’t fully control (such as throwing a party)
• Always feeling tense over regular activities such as going out, travelling, talking with strangers, or even going to a store
• Being obsessed with how you would protect yourself and run for cover if some kind of attack or accident were to happen
• Becoming a prisoner of your own fears, in your own home; depriving yourself from going out and having a life because you’re always fearful

Almost everyone has moments when they feel somewhat vulnerable, and they avoid going out of their home, sweet home in such moments. But if you always feel like that, and your entire life hinges on avoiding open spaces and being indoors as a way to feel safe… then you probably have agoraphobia.

5: Specific Phobias:

Some of the most common specific phobias seem to be focused on scary things, objects or animals. Typical objects of specific phobias include spiders, snakes, tornados, thunderstorm, airplanes or blood.

If you have a phobia, you’re bound to feeling an overwhelming and irrational fear when you’re in the proximity to the object of your phobia; in extreme cases, the very thought of it may be enough to make you lose control. If you have some of these reactions towards something, you may have a specific phobia:

• Excessive, on-going fear of a specific situation, object or event
• Instant feelings of terror, when confronted with the object of your phobia
• Absolute inability to manage your fears, despite knowing they’re irrational
• Going to great lengths to avoid the object or situation that scares you
• Experiencing restrictions to your normal routine, directly caused by fear

The vast majority of people have some kind of irrational fear, but it’s usually focused on something so narrow that it doesn’t really affect their lives noticeably.

For example, being afraid of airplanes isn’t a big problem, if you don’t have to use one regularly. Being afraid of dangerous snakes is hardly an issue, if you live in a big city and you plan on staying there.

If your fears and worries start interfering with your lifestyle, then you have a problem; and merely worrying about problems is absolutely useless, as you may know. You should direct your energies towards finding a solution that works for you!

6: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Death is a part of life, as well as disaster. As long as there are humans, there will probably be war, terror, brutality, torture and rape. This is something that most humans must come to terms with sooner or later, but for some people… especially patients who have lived through severe trauma, a post-traumatic stress disorder may arise.

This kind of trauma can affect people for the rest of their lifetime, unless it’s properly managed. Sometimes, the effects of PTSD may only arise for several years after the actual trauma that caused the disorders. If left untreated, it may lead to a wide range of crippling reactions, both at physical and psychological levels.

If you have personally experienced or witnessed an event that directly threatened your life, or the life of another person, you may develop PTSD.

You may have post-traumatic stress disorder if a) you personally experienced or witnessed an event that was potentially life threatening or caused a serious injury (to yourself or someone else) or b) you discovered that someone close to you experienced such an event.

These are some of the most common reactions to trauma, in patients suffering from PTSD:

Ceaselessly relieving the trauma:

• Having persistent nightmares, with themes related to the trauma
• Regularly playing out the event in your head
• Always being worried it may happen again
• Always feeling a strong and unpleasant emotional reaction when you’re reminded of the event that lead to trauma
• Getting obsessed with “what if” scenarios that might have avoided the incident in the first place

Avoiding the trauma entirely, or anything that resembles it:

• Forcing yourself not to think or mention the event, because you fear it will make you lose control, or somehow make it happened again
• Staying away from anything, anybody or any place that remotely makes you remember the incident or event that traumatized you
• Getting detached from others and losing interest in life
• Convincing yourself that you will likely die sooner than later
• Feeling emotionally numb, all the time

Always being on the edge:

• You start getting started and frightened much more easily
• You become short-tempered and easy to anger
• Extreme and persistent concentration problems
• Restless sleep, feeling a weight on your conscience

7: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

This category of anxiousness can be particularly destructive, because its sufferers are more active than any other type of anxiety disorder. If you have OCD, you’re likely to frustrate and confuse yourself regularly, as well as the people surrounding you.

Compulsions and Obsessions are somewhat similar things, but there’s a crucial difference: obsessions relate with thoughts, while compulsions relate with actions. In both cases, they are unwanted thoughts and actions which patients can’t seem to get away from.

For example, you may be obsessive in your fear of germs, which may prompt you to compulsively wash your hands every five minutes. You may have OCD if you have obsessions, compulsions, or both.

Common thinking patterns in obsessive people include:

• The source of your obsession is not a real (actual) problem, but usually something extremely subjective that most people really don’t worry about.
• You always try to shake away those thoughts when they occur, usually by doing something else. You always fail and end up dwelling in the obsessive thoughts.
• You are very much aware those thoughts come from inside yourself (not from external stimuli), but it doesn’t seem to encourage you to stopping them.
• You start feeling badly because you’re always obsessing over those thoughts; the worse you feel, the harder you seem to obsess.

Common behavior patterns in compulsive people include:

• You notice that most of your compulsions are closely related with underlying obsessions, but still you always choose to take action when the compulsion arises.
• You really believe that you have to act on your compulsion, as though something terrible would definitely happen if you didn’t.
• A sense of perfectionism arises that makes you perform the compulsive action repeatedly, as though it’s some kind of ritual.
• Sometimes, you really don’t want to obey your compulsion, but you simply feel that you have no choice except doing it.

Even though there are seven categories of anxiety disorders, they are closely related to one another. It’s very common for patients to fall within two, three, or even more different categories of anxiety.

Remember, the point of this article was not helping you ascertain to which category of anxiety disorders you’re subscribed. Rather, the point is making you realize that you may have elements from different types of anxiety disorders.

Most importantly, you should realize that even though all of these categories of anxiety disorders have specific name and treatments; there are also general treatments which address the underlying anxiety which is common to all of the aforementioned categories.

If you’d like to help yourself be free from anxiety, you will learn everything you need in the Calm Clinic website.

There are several techniques and natural methods that you can integrate in your daily routine to start undermining your anxiety in the same way it’s been undermining you all this time.

These methods and techniques hinge on increasing your well-being and relaxation skills, and you can start using it just as soon as you’re ready to take action to reclaim your well-being.

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Looking for resources related to this article? Try some of these.

• A Little Mistake That Makes Your Anxiety Worse
• How I Calmed Down My Anxiety in One Evening
• The Seven Main Types of Anxiety
• 3 Things to Do That Will Stop Anxiety and Panic Attacks Cold
• Ten Ways To Stop Anxiety Quickly