Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

We age from infant to toddler and from teenager to adulthood the mentality of our brain changes as we get older, anxiety can happen from one person to another but it will never go away. “Anxiety” is a term used very loosely. It’s not often that people acknowledge just how debilitating it is. Everyone worries every now and then, depending on what’s going on in your life, it is normal to feel stressed out once in a while. People with generalized anxiety disorder experience the feeling of stress to the extreme. “Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). GAD is the most commonly diagnosed anxiety disorder and occurs most frequently in young adults” (Gale, 2007, p.1).
Anxiety has a wide variety of symptoms. In the DSM-5 it states restlessness or feeling
People who suffer from generalized anxiety disorder often feel as though something bad is about to happen. Daily life becomes a constant state of worry, fear, and dread. This feeling restricts individuals from concentrating on daily tasks, definitely interfere with your ability to function well in your daily life, and work in your relationships. People are so busy thinking about upcoming problems that they do not even have time to think what those problems might look like. People with GAD are unable to stop worrying about everyday events and situations, and may become overly concerned with money, work, school, health or their families. They spend their days in constant worry or anxiety over certain situations, and they often end up feeling worn out, depressed, sad, and cannot enjoy relationships or social activities. Family history often plays an important role in the development of generalized anxiety disorder. If a person’s parent was constantly worried they probably grew up in an environment where fear and anxiety were part of their everyday life. GAD grows over time and it is built on every negative experience of a person’s life. Many people who develop GAD have had serious trauma in their past. Serious traumas include: death, major illness, injury, and or abuse. People with generalized anxiety disorder do not like going to new places
“It is not uncommon for someone with an anxiety disorder to also suffer from depression or vice versa. Nearly one-half of those diagnosed with depression are also diagnosed with an anxiety disorder “(Adaa, 2016). Anxiety and depression go hand in hand. People who have anxiety are most likely to have depression too. People with anxiety feel symptoms similar to depression like nervousness, irritability, concentrating, and sleeping problems. They have some thoughts of being suicidal and homicidal. Most of the time anxiety occurs towards future events and depression on the other hand dwells on the past. Anxiety can cause you to be afraid of how you are looked at by people, it makes you all anxious. To the point where you do not want to go out at all, so you turn to isolation. Being isolated causes you to feel depressed, this therefore makes you less proactive and less focus. It is an ongoing cycle. People who have both anxiety and depression have the “what if” statements always running through their mind. “In fact, according to one study, GAD was associated with more lost workdays than any other condition, including asthma, hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, and Major Depression” (Mahler, 2006, p.