Many people experience anxiety in their day-to-day lives and manage it through careful thought control and behavioral adjustments. Unfortunately, many people experience debilitating anxiety, making their lives nearly impossible. For example, you may struggle to work on time and feel challenged in social situations. Thankfully, treatment is available for this condition to ensure that you can live a happy and healthy life. However, you don’t have to be immobilized by anxiety.
What is Debilitating Anxiety?
Unfortunately, many people ask, “can anxiety be debilitating?” or feel like they’re exaggerating their symptoms. Unfortunately, support systems for mental health aren’t always great and may make it more challenging for a person to get help. This is a problem because debilitating or crippling anxiety differs from standard anxiety because it’s more persistent and causes more intense symptoms.
Debilitating anxiety is any disorder that negatively affects your physical and emotional health. It goes beyond feeling occasionally anxious about life. Instead, debilitating anxiety symptoms often make it impossible for a person to live their life. Therefore, they may be considered a disability if a person can’t live normally. Debilitating anxiety physical symptoms, and emotional reactions feel like:
- Difficulty concentrating on your day’s tasks
- Trouble controlling your feelings of anxiety
- Problems sleeping almost every night
- Physical pains, such as headaches and muscle soreness
- Pounding or racing heart
- Chest pain that worsens with your anxiety
- Panic attacks that you struggle to control
This anxiety may last several minutes, hours, or sometimes even days. Common triggers include sudden life changes, emotional struggles with peers, genetic predisposition, and trauma. PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, is one type of debilitating anxiety affecting millions. Other types of common anxiety disorders include problems as diverse as:
- Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which involves a persistent feeling of anxiety and dread in your day-to-day life that goes beyond simple worry
- Panic Disorder, which includes frequent and unexpected panic attacks that cause symptoms like a racing heart, trouble concentrating, or even aggressive behaviors
- Social Anxiety Disorder, which is a common condition that makes it hard for people to interact with others without feeling anxious or even panicking while talking
- Phobias, which are intense fear or aversion to things like spiders, insects, water, going outdoors, or other reasonably safe situations that most people don’t fear
Risk factors for anxiety disorders include general shyness, repeated exposure to adverse life events, thyroid problems, caffeine use, and some medications. When it takes control of a person’s life, debilitating anxiety can seem impossible to shake. However, understanding your symptoms and how to treat them can provide you with the help needed to live a happy and healthy life.
Symptoms of Debilitating Anxiety
Debilitating anxiety symptoms include physical and emotional struggles that can make your life difficult. Many people get emotionally mobilized by anxiety and struggle to connect with others. Some people experience debilitating anxiety and physical symptoms that make life very hard to handle. For example, a freelance content writer named Eric experienced debilitating anxiety over his work.
As a freelance writer, he had multiple clients but worried excessively that they would stop working with him. Unfortunately, this made it harder for him to complete his assignments and cost him many gigs with promising employers. His symptoms varied but included physical and emotional struggles. These included problems as diverse as:
- Social Avoidance: Eric’s extreme anxiety became so hard to handle that he started avoiding friends and family members. He lost his romantic partner, and friends began to worry about his health.
- Agitation and Anger: Extreme anxiety made it hard for Eric to control his emotions, and he experienced extreme irritability and anger that made his life even harder.
- Stomach Problems: Eating became difficult for Eric, and he experienced extreme nausea, vomiting, and digestive issues. He even lost weight and became too skinny.
- Paranoid Behavior: With time, Eric started to think that the world was “out to get him” or that he was doomed to failure. Such thoughts made it harder for him to apply for jobs and work effectively.
- Substance Abuse: Eric briefly fell into substance abuse problems by drinking too much liquor and smoking marijuana, which only worsened his anxiety: though he believed it helped.
- Thoughts of Self-Harm: Every once in a while, Eric’s anxiety would get the better of him, and he’d think of hurting or even killing himself. While he never did, the thoughts were troubling.
- Cognitive Impairment: Eric was once a sharp and on-top-of-things guy, but his debilitating anxiety made it hard for him to focus and caused many emotional struggles.
- Sleep Troubles: All these symptoms made it very hard for Eric to sleep at night, which caused insomnia and restlessness. This problem only increased his struggles and made recovery difficult.
These issues were very challenging for Eric to overcome, and the answer to the question, “can anxiety be debilitating?” was definitely positive for him. First, however, he used various treatment methods to treat his debilitating anxiety symptoms. Even his debilitating anxiety physical symptoms decreased through repeated therapy and expert support. It all started by tracking where his anxiety began.
Causes of Debilitating Anxiety
Debilitating anxiety has many causes, both physical and emotional. These vary based on your health and must be carefully assessed by your doctor to ensure your health. The following sections break down these issues and provide context with a true story based on a person’s experiences with anxiety. These stories offer more context and showcase how people manage their crippling anxiety.
Physical Health Concerns
While anxiety is an emotional or mental health concern, it’s also tied heavily to physical health. Problems like diabetes, heart disease, thyroid issues, respiratory problems, chronic pain, cancer, and drug abuse can cause debilitating anxiety. Let’s examine the case of Roger to get an idea.
Roger was a steel worker who suffered chronic pain and diabetes due to obesity. He constantly worried about these conditions and struggled to feel healthy. Even worse, some of his medications worsened his symptoms, and it was only by talking with his therapist that he learned to cope with this issue.
By losing weight and exercising, Roger managed much of his chronic pain and reduced his diabetes symptoms. This also helped him transition off of the medications that caused his anxiety. Treatment options like these can help you recover a happy and healthy life without stress.
Emotional Health Concerns
Debilitating anxiety is connected heavily to other emotional health concerns, such as depression. For example, someone with depression may worry excessively about how people perceive them and feel anxious about their life. PTSD and other trauma-based issues may also cause anxiety.
Other common causes of debilitating anxiety include loneliness and societal pressure. For example, Katie, an LGTBTQ+ African American woman, felt anxious about her identity growing up and struggled to fit in with her peers. This anxiety caused depression, self-harming behaviors, and other issues.
Thankfully, Katie could accept her identity and become happier through treatment. It took accepting her LGBTQ+ status and learning to stand up for her African American heritage. This approach worked well for her, but success varies based on a person’s emotional health.
Treatment Options for Debilitating Anxiety
Overcoming debilitating anxiety requires finding a treatment method that works for you. Thankfully, multiple therapies can try that could provide numerous benefits. These breakdown into three specific categories, which we’ll explain in more depth below.
Psychological Counseling
Counseling therapy pairs you with a therapist who understands your case and can provide support by helping you better understand your anxiety. They can also prescribe medications that can help you overcome your fear quicker. The pros of this approach include:
- Diagnosing the problem
- Understanding underlying issues
- Learning coping methods
- Creating a friendly ear for your care
- Giving you a new perspective
- Reducing your guilt
The downsides of this approach include the following:
- Struggling to find the right counselor
- Worrying about privacy breaches
- Getting attached to the counselor
- Worsening condition due to inappropriate counseling
Meditation Therapy
Many people need medication therapy to manage their anxiety. It can help balance your mind’s chemical state and provide a safer and healthy treatment. Unfortunately, not everyone gets medication for anxiety, even when needed, which is a real issue. The pros of this approach include:
- Balancing your mental chemistry to avoid long-term anxiety
- Helping you feel better about yourself as a person
- Managing short- and long-term anxiety
- Providing fast-acting relief for many people
- Supplementing traditional talk therapy
- Improving behavior adjustment care
While beneficial for many people, medication therapy does have downsides, such as:
- Causing dizziness or confusing
- Creating a high potential for addiction
- Producing unwanted emotional side effects
- Making a person drowsy or tired
- Decreasing in effectiveness with time
- Triggering vomiting and nausea symptoms
Self-Help Methods
Self-help concepts have become very popular for many people with anxiety. These methods include self-guided behavior therapy, emotional support apps, meditation, breathing exercises, and more. These techniques provide many benefits that can help with managing your anxiety, including:
- Costing little to nothing
- Teaching you better-coping mechanisms
- Supplementing traditional care options
- Helping you avoid expensive therapy
- Minimizing your need for medications
While often a critical approach for many people, self-guided therapy has limits, such as:
- Not working well for everyone
- Lacking outside perspective
- Integrating unhealthy therapy concepts
- Utilizing questionable thought patterns
- Providing non-medical support
- Leading to potentially problematic thought patterns
Lifestyle Changes to Manage Debilitating Anxiety
While treatment with professionals can help you recover from debilitating anxiety, it’s also essential to change your life to minimize your symptoms. Identifying your triggers is critical and can help you reduce your worry and become happier. You can also take steps like:
- Eating a healthier diet rich in vitamins and minerals, including fruits and vegetables
- Exercising regularly to manage muscle tension and mindfulness
- Practicing meditation exercises that calm your mind and balance your emotional health
- Trying mindfulness exercises like guided imagery and breathing techniques
- Starting a support group with people who you trust
This last step is essential because you can add loved ones, family members, and counseling partners to your group. It’s important to continually seek help from loved ones and get support, as this can help make your anxiety management more successful. You can even teach these techniques to other people in your life with anxiety.
