“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.”
While some anxiety is a normal part of life (sigh), when it’s accompanied by feelings of hopelessness or loss of control—or when it starts to interfere with your everyday functioning—it’s time to seek help from a professional therapist.
Scientifically speaking, anxiety is just your body’s natural response to stress.
The night before a big job interview, your first day of school, giving a speech in public, the suspense before a blind date—those are normal feelings of anxiety that we can all relate to. Right?
Even though anxiety is a universal human experience, when it goes off the rails, it can turn into a very real and serious condition that needs attention.
When anxiety starts to feel all-encompassing and lasts for a prolonged period of time, it crosses into a different category called an anxiety disorder.
If you have an inkling you might be experiencing anxiety disorder, here are some tell-tale symptoms you should be on the lookout for.
We’ll share more about the symptoms of different anxiety disorders below.
Please note, only a mental health professional is qualified to diagnose these disorders. If you have questions, or would like to get a personalized match with an anxiety expert, you can schedule a free call here.
Panic Disorder is a condition that causes bouts of severe panic attacks. These episodes are experienced as “intense fear that triggers severe physical reactions when there is no real danger or apparent cause.”
Panic attacks can be super terrifying to the person experiencing them, and can even mimic the symptoms of an actual heart attack (yikes!).
Some individuals experience relief once the stressors in their life subside, but they usually indicate deeper, underlying issues that need attention to be resolved in the long term and prevent recurrence.
if the attacks continue beyond a one-off, you should reach out to a professional right away.
What was formerly called Hypochondria is a disorder now commonly referred to as “Illness Anxiety Disorder.” You may be more familiar with its noun form, “hypochondriac.”
Someone with Illness Anxiety Disorder excessively worries about having a medical condition, even without a substantiated diagnosis from a doctor.
Some events that are believed to cause Illness Anxiety Disorder include a major stressful event in your life, a history of abuse or neglect during your childhood years, or even the loss of a loved one in your life due to a medical condition or illness.
Did you also know that eating disorders—including anorexia and bulimia— are categorized as anxiety-related disorders?
Anorexia nervosa, in a nutshell, is a disorder in which you see yourself as overweight even if you are really underweight.
Common symptoms include restricting what you eat, excessively weighing yourself, or forcing yourself to throw up the food you have eaten.
This disorder can be extremely dangerous, and you should seek help right away if you feel that you suffer from it.
Another common type of eating disorder is bulimia nervosa, which is marked by frequent episodes of binge-eating, followed by attempts to get rid of the food through forced vomiting, laxatives, or fasting.
Once again, this can be really harmful to your body, and can cause dehydration, chronic sore throat, or even worse effects on your health, so you should get help as soon as possible.
To learn more about eating disorders, please visit our dedicated page.
The good news is, therapy can successfully alleviate all of these disorders by helping you minimize the anxiety in your life, identify and change underlying thought and behavioral patterns that contribute to your anxiety, and provide you with strategies to decrease discomfort while restoring an overall sense of peace.
To experience true and lasting joy in our life, we must face and conquer our anxieties once and for all.
See the About Therapy page for a deeper look into this process.
We also offer group therapy for anxiety, as well as more specific conditions that we previously mentioned, like panic disorder, illness anxiety disorder, and eating disorders.
Our research-based therapy methods are proven to be effective for overcoming Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Panic Disorder, Hypochondria/Illness Anxiety Disorder, and other forms of anxiety and stress.
We find you the perfect therapist – or your money back.
Promenade
127 Broadway Suite 205
Santa Monica, CA 90401
Venice
130 Ocean Park Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90405
San Fernando Valley
16055 Ventura Blvd.
Encino, CA 91436.
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12100 Wilshire Blvd. 8th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90025
City
10801 National Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90064
