What Are The Different Types of Anxiety?
While each person’s experience is unique, there are some common features of anxiety that tend to fall into distinct categories. If you experience anxiety, being familiar with these categories may help you to better understand these experiences and give you more direction when deciding what to do about it.
Anxiety is not one size fits all – people experience anxiety in many ways, for different reasons, in different situations, and at different levels of intensity. While each person’s experience is unique, there are some common features of anxiety that tend to fall into distinct categories. If you experience anxiety, being familiar with these categories may help you to better understand these experiences and give you more direction when deciding what to do about it. Here is a brief list of some of the most common types of anxiety:
Generalised anxiety
Generalised anxiety involves worries and fears about lots of different things. A person experiencing generalised anxiety might have difficulty calming themselves, and often might not even know exactly why they are feeling anxious. The anxious feelings might fluctuate in intensity, but they are almost always there. Generalised anxiety can also involve feeling irritable, tired, having difficulty concentrating, physical tension, and difficulty sleeping.
Panic attacks
A panic attack is a sudden, unexpected, intense feeling of anxiety. Panic attacks usually involve physical sensations like a pounding heart, shaking, difficulty breathing, a tight feeling in the chest, and dizziness. Because of these sudden physical symptoms, a person having a panic attack might think that they are having a heart attack or other medical emergency, and these concerns can often make them panic more. Panic attacks can sometimes be triggered by something specific, but often there is no clear trigger.
Social anxiety
Social anxiety is when someone worries a lot about how others are perceiving them and fears rejection and criticism. Social anxiety can be triggered in situations like meeting new people, making conversation, eating in front of others, or otherwise being watched by others. Someone experiencing social anxiety might struggle to assert themselves and can sometimes even avoid social situations.
Specific phobia
A specific phobia is an intense fear of a particular object or situation – for example, needles, plane flights, spiders, heights, etc. Someone experiencing a specific phobia will do just about anything to avoid the thing that they are scared of, even if it is completely irrational.
Obsessive-compulsive
Obsessions involve persistent thoughts or urges that the person finds difficult to get rid of. Obsessions often cause the person to engage in compulsions, which involve certain repetitive actions. For example, someone might constantly worry about their home being broken into, and these worries cause them to repeatedly check their locks. The compulsive action seems to relieve the anxiety in the short term, however, the obsessive thoughts keep coming back, and the compulsions may become more and more frequent over time.
Post-traumatic stress
Sometimes anxiety can develop after an event, or series of events, in which a person’s life is at risk, or they experience serious injury or violence against themselves or others. A person experiencing post-traumatic stress often has distressing memories or dreams of the traumatic event and will often avoid situations that remind them of the event. Post-traumatic stress can sometimes cause people to change the way they think and lead to difficulties with trust, along with other changes in behaviour.
What now?
If none of these descriptions capture your experience of anxiety, don’t worry – this list does not include all types of anxiety, and everyone is different! These categories can be a helpful guide for understanding anxiety, but certainly do not cover the wide range of possible experiences. It can also be helpful to keep in mind that many of the experiences described here can be normal if they are mild or only occur from time to time. If this is the case for you, practising strategies for mental wellbeing, such as those offered by Mind Ease, can be a useful way to manage these challenges. However, even if you do relate to one or more of these categories, it’s good to avoid self-diagnosing. If you find that your experience of anxiety is persistent and causing significant disruption to your life, it might be best for you to seek advice from a doctor or qualified mental health practitioner.
