Anxiety disorder can significantly lower your life quality and get into your way of enjoying life. Therefore the general principle of recovery involves finding a mental health specialist who specializes in anxiety disorders. That could be a coach, a counselor or a psychotherapist. Important part is finding someone who really understands anxiety.
Anxiety is solvable but needs counter-intuative solution
Anxiety problems are solvable but they need counter-intuitive solutions. Our brain has prebuilt patterns dealing with anxiety. Often we follow natural, prebuilt patterns that keep us stuck in anxiety problems.
For example, you may suffer from health anxiety and fear dying of heart attack. Your brain might tell you that in order to relieve your anxiety you should Google your symptoms. Just to make sure you’re okay. What practice shows, googling symptoms actually makes anxiety even worse and raises your concern, panic. Brain natural path of solving anxiety is engaging in goggling but a counter-intuitive solution should be completely avoiding googling behavior.
How long does it take to recover from anxiety disorder?
Studies show that it takes up to 7 to 15 months to recover from an anxiety disorder episode. 61.2% people recover within 12 months, 66.9% within 24 months, and 69.9% within 33 months.
With 30% not being recovered after 3 years, anxiety disorders are thus characterized by a high risk of chronicity.
Older age, not having a paid job, higher neuroticism, more physical disorders, and worse physical functioning were associated with longer episode duration. [1]
Recovery from anxiety can be frustrating..
Recovery from anxiety disorder can be frustrating. A lot of times anxiety sufferers feel like their therapist doesn’t get to the bottom of their problem or methods that therapy offers doesn’t suit their needs in order to recover.
You can try several different therapy methods, change mental health specialists and still experience anxiety symptoms after years of trying to recover. Understanding limitations and factors that affect the recovery process becomes important.
Recovery from anxiety disorder depends on 3 factors:
- Severity of anxiety symptoms;
- Cause, reason that triggers anxiety symptoms;
- Genetic factors.
Severity of anxiety symptoms
Obviously there are different levels of anxiety. Anxiety symptoms can range from tolerant to completely crippling.
Tolerant anxiety symptoms
People with tolerant anxiety symptoms still participate in daily life. They go to social events, enjoy hobbies, hang out with friends, visit a movie theater or can hold a stable job.
They may experience fear or anxiety in some social situations but the key point here is.. Their anxiety symptoms are manageable. They often disappear once the anxiety trigger is gone.
From time to time, people with tolerant anxiety symptoms may experience increased heart rate, sweating, colder hands and feet, shakiness, needing to use the restroom more often. Nothing out of the zone of being distressed.
Crippling anxiety symptoms
People with crippling anxiety symptoms often experience low quality of life. They have a hard time participating in social activities, leaving a house. They feel unwell and avoid social events, participating in hobbies they enjoyed before. Sometimes even small things like going to the grocery store, using public transport, appearing on the street becomes challenging.
In addition, they may experience panic attacks, intense fear, debilitating physical symptoms that force them to avoid certain places, people, social situations.
People with crippling anxiety symptoms often feel like they are out of control and have difficulty managing their anxiety symptoms. They may worry a lot, feel on the edge and have a hard time stopping thought processes.
They may experience unpleasant physical symptoms for no particular reason. For example, physical symptoms as rapid heart rate, difficulty breathing, choking, heavy sweating, cold hands and feet, restlessness, fatigue, muscle tension/pain, dry mouth, panic attacks.
Severity of anxiety disorder will affect treatment methods
The rule of thumb here is.. Heavier anxiety symptoms a person experiences the more time will be needed to heal them. Also, treatment methods will vary based on severity of persons anxiety symptoms.
Person with tolerant anxiety might be okay with just psychotherapy, grounding, self-regulation, breathing and relaxation techniques to get through his problem. Person with crippling symptoms might need medication added in the short-term if his anxiety symptoms are resistant to treatment methods mentioned above. Therefore combining psychotherapy and medication might be the only way to get through in heavier cases.
Cause, reason that triggers anxiety symptoms
Here are two scenarios:
First one, when you are able to identify sources of anxiety. Anxiety is caused by social situation, place, person, or inner thought that you are able to identify in the process of self reflection. It might be a fear, anger, helplessness, expectation or self-doubt that triggers anxiety symptoms.
You have a clear material to work on. While it can take time to feel comfortable, for example, to stand up for yourself in a job environment, you have clear problem to tackle in different ways.
Second one, source of anxiety is unknown. For example, you might experience restlessness, rapid heart rate, sweating from time to time for no apparent reason. Some people might reach out to a family doctor and follow advice of taking vitamins, drinking relaxing tee’s, sleeping better which might be a solution for the problem.
Subsequently, others might go to the mental health specialist and try to find “unknown” reason for their anxiety problems. If you have tried everything and still experience persistent anxiety symptoms then move to the 3rd bullet point.
Genetic factors
Eventho you might believe that anxiety is caused only by psychological factors and it can be resolved with only psychological treatment methods, that might not be the case.
It’s common for mental health specialists to attribute anxiety to unresolved childhood trauma or daily stress. While some part of that might be true, there are cases where 30% of people don’t recover from anxiety disorder after 33 months. [1]
If you have tried every available psychotherapy method and still experience mild anxiety symptoms after years of trying, you may conclude that there’s something more than just trauma and stress that is causing your anxiety.
Anxiety disorder isn’t just things in your head..
One could argue that some event in the past caused your anxiety symptoms and because of that you will have them for the rest of your life. I wouldn’t agree with such a conclusion. Sometimes there are cases where you can’t find a clear source of anxiety. Some specialists might say: ,,It’s all in your head and you have to find the root cause of your anxiety in order to resolve it. Antidepressants are only patches on your wound. ”
Well, what if there isn’t a psychological root cause to your anxiety disorder? How can you resolve something that isn’t there? If your family members suffer from mental health disorders and you still can’t find a solution to your problem it’s safe to conclude that your anxiety disorder is caused by genetic factors.
Anxiety disorder that has a genetic base means..
Sometimes it means that you will experience anxiety to some degree for the rest of your life. You should draw the same parallel as for physical diseases to mental health disorders.
If you didn’t have anxiety disorder, maybe you would be diabetic or dealing with high blood pressure. You don’t know what it could be if you didn’t have what you have.
In practice, psychological methods alone sometimes can’t resolve disease. It’s just a hard reality. Of course there are medications that can help you tremendously. You just have to find and combine them with the best psychological treatment methods that are out there. Hopefully you are safe and well!
References:
Ten Have M, Tuithof M, van Dorsselaer S, Kleinjan M, Penninx BWJH, Batelaan NM, de Graaf R. Duration of anxiety disorder and its associated risk indicators: Results of a longitudinal study of the general population. Depress Anxiety. 2021 Mar;38(3):328-336. doi:10.1002/da.23103 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33107675/