As someone who has experienced bouts of anxiety consistently throughout her life, I am here to shed some light, some explanations, and hopefully inspire others to feel less alone. What I’ve learned over time is to slow down, and learn what I can control, but I still struggle to this day. And that’s okay, because healing is a nonstop journey and I hope that I can inspire someone to want to take that journey as well.

It is a completely normal experience to have bouts of anxiety throughout moments in life. It’s ‘normal’ to feel anxious about becoming an adult, a first-time mom, a first-time dad, self-discovery… it’s even ‘normal’ to feel anxious about getting help in general. We all face certain periods of life that will seem to trigger anxiety in us, but when does it become a problem?

For people with anxiety disorders, it’s an everyday struggle of intense, excessive, and persistent worry about everyday situations. Most anxiety disorders include episodes of sudden intense nerves, or fear, that peak quickly (panic attacks).

Anxiety can also be debilitating, stopping people from getting the full experience of life itself. Something that I can easily relate to is the fear of the unknown, and my deep distrust in the public. Examples of these things can include not driving at night, not going to certain places at certain times, and even cutting ties with family (which sometimes isn’t the worst thing to do). The list can go on.

Types of Anxiety Disorders

There’s also a list of different types of anxiety disorders which I will write another blog to go into detail, but here are a list of the many types:

Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Social Anxiety Disorder
Specific Phobias
Separation Anxiety Disorder
Agoraphobia

Anxiety disorder due to a medical condition
Panic Disorder
Selective Mutism
Substance-induced Anxiety Disorder
Unspecified Anxiety Disorder
And many more

It is absolutely possible to have more than one type of anxiety disorder!

When Should I See A Doctor?

If you feel like it’s interfering with your ability to work, your relationships, or other aspects of your life (such as parenting)
The anxiety is upsetting to you and it’s difficult to manage
You feel depressed, you find that you need to use illicit drugs/alcohol to function, or have other mental health concerns

If you feel it could be associated with a physical health issue
If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts or behaviors – if this is the case, seek emergency help immediately

The sooner, the better. If you feel unsure, make an appointment with your doctor or local mental health program to talk to a doctor about options. It’s easier to manage the sooner you accept help.

What Are The Most Common Symptoms?

Feeling nervous, restless, or tense
Having a sense of impending danger, panic, or doom
Having an increased heart rate
Breathing rapidly (hyperventilation)
Sweating
Trembling

Feeling weak or tired
Trouble concentrating or thinking about anything other than the present worry
Having trouble sleeping
Experiencing gastrointestinal (GI) problems
Having difficulty controlling worry
Having the urge to avoid things that trigger anxiety

Types of Treatments and Therapies

There are many ways of managing anxiety disorders from types of therapy to medication. No one thing is right for everyone so make sure to speak with your doctor or therapist about your personal thoughts regarding treatment.

Psychotherapy

Also known as ‘talk-therapy‘. This type of therapy must be tailored towards the patient’s specific disorder or issues to be effective.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

CBT teaches people different ways of thinking, behaving, and reacting to objects and situations that induce anxiety. Cognitive therapy and exposure therapy are normally both used in CBT to treat social anxiety disorder. Cognitive therapy focuses on identifying, challenging, and then neutralizing unhelpful or distorted thoughts underlying anxiety disorders. Exposure therapy focuses on confronting the fears underlying an anxiety disorder to help people engage in activities they have been avoiding. Exposure therapy is sometimes used along with relaxation exercises and/or imagery. These types of therapy can be used on other anxiety disorders as well.

Medication

Medications do not treat anxiety disorders, but they do make the symptoms easier to handle or manage. I will preface that medication is something not to be taken lightly as most medications used for anxiety are habit-forming and can make the condition worse than it is. However, for short periods, this can be a good idea.

Anti-Anxiety Medications

Most commonly known as benzodiazepines. There are both benefits and drawbacks when it comes to these types of medications. They are effective at relieving anxiety symptoms at the moment, and they take effect more quickly than antidepressants that are prescribed for anxiety. However, if you take consistently, you will build a tolerance for them and they won’t work as effectively as they once did. Personally, I have experienced this when I was a young adult and was prescribed many different medications at once. I built a tolerance to medicine, leading me to need to take more to be able to manage the symptoms which later led to a dependency on it. To avoid these issues, doctors will usually only prescribe them for a short period.

Since anti-anxiety medications are habit-forming, it is important to know that if you decide to stop taking them, then it needs to be slowly tapered down until you’ve completely weaned yourself off of them, or else you might experience withdrawal symptoms which will likely trigger the anxiety symptoms to return.

These medications may be needed for long-term use. If so, they should be prescribed on an ‘as-needed’ basis. With new federal regulations on controlled substances, this is something that most doctors won’t do as often but it can be done if the anxiety symptoms cannot be managed easily with other methods.

Antidepressants

Antidepressants are normally prescribed for depression but can help manage anxiety. In my personal case, antidepressants threw off my chemicals so much that it worsened my problems more than helping them, but everyone is different. A common issue that I have seen with antidepressants is that you might need to try out several different antidepressants before you find one that works best for you. I also experienced this, and I feel that it’s almost inhumane in a way. I had so many experiences with so many antidepressants where I landed myself in the psych ward because my body did not handle antidepressants well. It’s very important to know that antidepressants take a minimum of 4-6 weeks to be able to notice a change in your anxiety symptoms. You may also feel that they get worse before they get better.

Just like anti-anxiety medication, these medications also need to be weaned and tapered if you plan to stop taking them because they will cause withdrawal symptoms as well. In some cases, children, teens, and young adults under the age of 25 may experience an increased number of suicidal thoughts when using antidepressants and should be supervised often during treatment for this reason. Do not be afraid to talk to your doctor.

Beta Blockers

Beta-blockers are normally used for high blood pressure but can be effective at managing certain physical symptoms of anxiety such as rapid heartbeat, shaking, trembling, and blushing. These are used as a preventive intervention for such anxiety attacks.

Is It Right For You?

As always, talk with your doctor about any concerns you have about using any sort of medication. Like I’ve said before, everybody is different and what works for one person might not work for another person.

It’s also good to know that there could be other factors that exacerbate anxiety symptoms such as smoking, drinking caffeine, cold medicines, herbal supplements, and illicit drugs. These things can also interfere with how these other medicines can work, so as always, talk to your doctor.

Here are a few examples of what you and your doctor could (and should) discuss:

How well medications are working or might work to improve your symptoms
Benefits and side effects of each medication
Risk for serious side effects based on your medical history
The likelihood of the medications requiring lifestyle changes

Costs of each medication
Other alternative therapies, medications, vitamins, and supplements you are taking and how these may affect your treatment; a combination of medication and psychotherapy is the best approach for many people with anxiety disorders
How the medication should be stopped (Some drugs can’t be stopped abruptly and must be tapered off slowly under a doctor’s supervision).

Support Groups

Joining a support group is probably one of the easiest things that you can do to help manage symptoms or gain some insight without a doctor’s visit. Normally, it’s free too. You can check your local mental health programs for more information or you can visit our resources page for support groups in your area, or you can feel free to jump into the Eradication Wellness Support Group every Wednesday night on Google Meet.

Stress Management Techniques

Techniques such as meditation are great to know for those moments when you’re suddenly hit with these symptoms. They are great methods at managing anxiety, but should never replace therapy.

It never occurred to me that I could be misdiagnosed with a mental illness. I knew that there was something “not normal” about the way my mind worked, but I had complete faith in the medical world of America because that’s how I was raised. I didn’t think that I would be treated for a mental illness that I didn’t have for years until now. Suddenly, everything made sense to me because nothing worked for me throughout all those years. My diagnosis finally came back as BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) and not Bipolar II. I still experience episodes but they are always so quick that it’s like a light switch, but no wonder I felt so completely off whenever they put me on meds. Every single medication was horrible to me, I never felt happy. I never felt like me. But let’s take a look how the impact that this has lives. Let’s see how common a mental illness misdiagnosis is and how we can bring more awareness to the lazy shortcuts that doctors take.

How Common is a Misdiagnosis

A misdiagnosis can happen with any condition, psychological or medical. Here’s the top 3 misdiagnosed disorders.

ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder)

A little more than 6% of children in the United States are medicated for ADHD. Symptoms of ADHD can also be seen in other conditions though. Children could be suffering from a sensory processing disorder (SPD) which can present itself though heightened sensitivity to sound, sight, touch, or other sensory inputs. Fidgeting and difficulty to focus could be a type of anxiety. ADHD is also estimated to co-occur with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) anywhere from 37% to 78% of the time.

Something that I personally learned is that most abusive parents will manipulate their children into masking their full symptoms to the doctor due to fear of losing their children if they speak out about why they feel a certain way as well. I personally experienced this myself, which led to being inaccurately diagnosed as a child.

Depression

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD): 7.1% of adults have had at least one major depressive episode in the past year. A study from Johns Hopkins University suggests that more than 60% of people who receive this diagnosis don’t actually have it.

The study observed that more than 5,600 patients who received a depression diagnosis in a non-hospital setting. Researchers judged that only 38.4% have received the correct diagnosis but nearly 75% reported they were using prescription medication for their symptoms.

Bipolar Disorder

This disorder is less commonly diagnosed than anxiety and depression, and some doctors steer away from the diagnosis altogether. However, a misdiagnosis can be significantly more disruptive, especially due to the medications that are usually prescribed when diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. Only 2.8% of people get diagnosed with bipolar disorder, whether it’s accurate or not. It is actually much more common to be diagnoses with bipolar disorder when they don’t actually have it. Bipolar Disorder is actually one of the most commonly confused with Borderline Personality Disorder due to the intense mood swings that are involved.

Effects of Misdiagnosis

Usually the first step after finding a diagnosis is to find the correct path of treatment, but with a misdiagnosis, that delays any progress. The consequences of a misdiagnosis can be devastating, even life-changing.

1. Confusion

Patients who are misdiagnosed usually end up distraught and frustrated because their path of treatment seems to not be helping, and in some cases, it’s worse than it was before they started treatment. This can lead to the patient feeling guilty or shameful, possibly resulting in a breakdown.

2. Incorrect Medication

This can be very dangerous. As we should know, if you take a medication that you don’t actually need, it can cause serious problems mentally or physically. Taking ADHD meds such as Adderall or Concerta when you don’t actually have it can result in impairments in working memory performance and other areas of performance. Receiving the wrong medication can result in all the side effects without any of the benefits that the doctor thought you would be getting. This can causes more issues while not addressing the issues at hand.

In my personal experience, I’ve been on nearly every medication on the market for depression, anxiety, insomnia, bipolar disorder- you name it. When I was first diagnosed with certain mental illnesses at 18, my psychiatrist loaded me up on like 5-6 different medications and every two weeks I would go to her and have more issues, which now I know was most likely caused by a misdiagnosis. In the last 6-7 years, after being diagnoses with Bipolar II, I noticed a slight improvement in my problems but once they started me on mood stabilizers, I could tell that they made me a zombie. They made me more disconnected from reality and I ended up having more anger, more insomnia; my breakdowns were often and more explosive. But after I weaned myself off of meds (before my BPD diagnosis), I noticed that I felt more in tune. I started going to therapy and realizing that I had more success controlling my symptoms through other measures than loading up mood stabilizers and feeling like a zombie.

3. Worsening Condition

As I highlighted in my personal situation right before this, by getting misdiagnoses, it results in a worsening condition. If you are misdiagnosed with depression, you would be placed on an antidepressant (usually an SSRI) which takes months for to be able to stabilize the serotonin, so essentially the doctor won’t pay attention to how you’re feeling when you’re literally getting worse by the day.

Why Does It Happen?

I’m not saying that all doctors are incompetent, but incompetency does play a huge role in being misdiagnosed. However, other factors can complicate the situation as well.

1. Patient History

Mental health clinicians rely exclusively on reported symptoms and patient history. Because of this, clinicians are more likely to come to incorrect conclusions without sufficient information. Patients are not always willing to talk about substance abuse or childhood trauma, and they may not understand how crucial they are to the formation of a correct diagnosis. Sometimes, they may not feel like their experiences and emotional states are worth speaking about.

2. Masking Symptoms

A good clinician doesn’t look at the patient’s list of symptoms and see what diagnosis best fits those parameters. They must consider all possible factors, rather than putting a band-aid on symptoms with a hasty, incomplete diagnosis.

3. Multiple Diagnoses

It’s very common that a physical health disorder can be misdiagnoses for a mental illness. Someone who is chronically fatigued can be diagnoses with depression when it’s actually hypothyroidism. Alternatively, someone who was diagnoses with Bipolar Disorder initially, might actually have Borderline Personality Disorder due to the severe and intense emotions that are associated with both.

How to Prevent Misdiagnosis

1. Be open and honest

Be transparent with your doctor. Don’t hide anything, even if it seems small. Every detail matters and be life-changing.

2. Create a Record

Keep a daily or weekly journal of symptoms or behaviors. Sometimes this can be overwhelming to keep it super detailed, but the point that you can highlight everything that you feel in a given day or week, so that way the doctor can be able to differentiate the patterns. It doesn’t have to be official, just thorough enough that there can be a pattern that can be read. This is very important, especially when trying to figure out if you have Bipolar Disorder (where episodes are usually longer term, manic for weeks, depressed for weeks) or Borderline Personality Disorder (where episodes are quick and usually happen many times a day, like a flip of a switch).

3. See a Specialist

It’s important to see someone who specializes in certain disorders, because they are specifically trained to be able to differentiate from the different mental illnesses or disorders.

Tag: Anxiety

Anxiety and Things that Cause Anxiety