Anxiety can come in lots of different shapes and sizes. What may be an everyday worry to one person can develop into an anxiety disorder in another. There is little rhyme or reason as to why some of us are more susceptible to anxiety than others.

Anxiety can also come and go depending on what else is going on in your life at the time, but it is worth taking the time to find out a little about the four common types of anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders can be broken down into four distinct groups. A person can suffer from one, two or all of them at the same time.

Types Of Anxiety disorder

Panic Attacks Or Panic Disorder

Panic attacks are caused by extreme anxiety. Our fear causes the body to react with the fight or flight reaction preparing us for action whenever we feel threatened. With a panic attack, the body overreacts to an anxiety causing the extreme symptoms of a panic attack. This organ acts like a switch controlling anxiety levels, turning our bodies’ response to stress on and off. What appears to happen to people who suffer from panic attacks is that the switch gets stuck in the on position so that we are constantly overreacting to stress and anxiety. With training, it is possible to reverse this and get back to “normal.”

(GAD) Generalized Anxiety Disorder

If you suffer from panic attacks, you may well end up with a generalized anxiety disorder. This is where you end up with a feeling of general anxiety long after the effects of a panic attack have gone. The way I have described this myself is that it is rather like having a bucket of stress inside you. Typically that bucket fills at stressful times and empties when we relax.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

OCD is aptly named. It is literally where obsessive or unwanted thoughts cause you to control your actions compulsively. For example, some people become obsessive about being clean and may feel compelled to wash their hands repeatedly or as soon as any contamination has taken place.

Phobias

There are two main types of phobia. You can develop a specific phobia which is where you have an irrational fear of something that poses little or no threat. Generally speaking, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you have little to fear from spiders, but it is surprising how many people suffer from this fear. This is what is called a simple phobia; it is an irrational fear of one thing that poses little threat to you in your everyday life.