Anxiety For Dummies. Laura L. Smith

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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 from person to person and include the following:

       Accelerated heartbeat

       Shallow, rapid breathing

       A spike in blood pressure

       Dizziness

       Fatigue

       Gastrointestinal upset

       General aches and pains

       Muscle tension or spasms

       Sweating

These are simply the temporary effects that anxiety exerts on your body. Chronic anxiety left untreated poses serious risks to your health as well. We discuss the general health effects in greater detail in Chapter 2.

NAME THAT PHOBIA!

      Phobias are one of the most common types of anxiety, and we discuss them in detail in Chapter 2. A phobia is an excessive, disproportionate fear of a relatively harmless situation or thing. Sometimes, the object of the phobia poses some risk, but the person’s reaction clearly exceeds the danger. Do you know the technical names for phobias? Draw arrows from the common name of each phobia to the corresponding technical name. See how many you get right. The answers are printed upside down at the bottom.

      Be careful if you have triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13), because we’re giving you 13 phobias to match!

Technical Name	Means a Fear of This
1. Ophidiophobia	A. Growing old
2. Zoophobia	B. Sleep
3. Gerascophobia	C. The mind
4. Acrophobia	D. Imperfection
5. Lachanophobia	E. Snakes
6. Hypnophobia	F. Fear
7. Atealophobia	G. New things
8. Phobophobia	H. Animals
9. Sesquipedalophobia	I. Small things
10. Neophobia	J. Mirrors
11. Psychophobia	K. Heights
12. Microphobia	L. Long words
13. Eisoptrophobia	M. Vegetables

      Answers: 1. E, 2. H, 3. A, 4. K, 5. M, 6. B, 7. D, 8. F, 9. L, 10. G, 11. C, 12. I, 13. J

Seeking Help for Your Anxiety

      As we say earlier in this chapter, most people simply choose to live with anxiety rather than seek professional help. Some people worry that treatment won’t work. Or they believe that the only effective treatment out there is medication, and they fear the possibility of side effects. Others fret about the costs of getting help. And still others have concerns that tackling their anxiety would cause their fears to increase so much that they wouldn’t be able to stand it.

      

Well, stop adding worry to worry. You can significantly reduce your anxiety through a variety of interesting strategies. Many of these don’t have to cost a single cent. And if one doesn’t work, you can try another. Most people find that at least a couple of the approaches that we review work for them. The following sections provide an overview of treatment options and give you some guidance on what to do if your self-help efforts fall short.

      

Untreated anxiety may cause long-term health problems. It doesn’t make sense to avoid doing something about your anxiety.

      Matching symptoms and therapies

      Anxiety symptoms appear in three different spheres, as follows (see the earlier section “Recognizing the Symptoms of Anxiety” for more details on these symptoms):

       Thinking symptoms: The thoughts that run through your mind

       Behaving symptoms: The things you do in response to anxiety

       Feeling symptoms: How your body reacts to anxiety

      Treatment corresponds to each of these three areas, as we discuss in the following three sections.

      Thinking therapies

      One of the most effective treatments for a wide range of emotional problems, known as cognitive therapy, deals with the way you think about, perceive, and interpret everything that’s important to you, including

       Your views about yourself

       The events that happen to you in life

       Your future

When people feel unusually anxious and worried, they almost inevitably distort the way they think about these things. That distortion actually causes much of their anxiety. In the following example, Luann has both physical symptoms and cognitive symptoms of anxiety. Her therapist chooses a cognitive approach to help her.

       Luann, a junior in college, gets physically ill before every exam. She throws up, has diarrhea, and her heart races. She fantasizes that she will fail each and every test she takes and that eventually, the college will dismiss her. Yet, her lowest grade to date has been a B–.

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