Anxiety Disorders: What They Are and What to Do

What is anxiety?

We’ve all felt anxious about something. Adrenaline rushes in. Cortisol gives us that unmistakable sense of dread. Our heart races. Breathing becomes shallow. We tense up and sweat buckets, our head pounds, and our stomach aches.

While not a pleasant experience, anxiety can be a normal human response to stressors in our environment. Normal anxiety is a temporary and realistic response to pressures such as taking a test or interviewing for a job. Once the event is over, the anxiety resolves.

Anxiety is a God-given reaction meant to protect us from dangerous situations. When we feel unsafe, our body responds with one of four mechanisms: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. Most of us are familiar with the first three. The fourth is a learned trauma response “where a person finds themselves responding to someone they perceive as dangerous by engaging in people-pleasing and submissive behaviors” (Fawning Trauma Response: Why It Happens & How to Stop, 2024).

These four responses in themselves do not signal that a person has an anxiety disorder. They are usually brief, resolve in minutes, and are triggered in proportionate response to our environment. So, when exactly does anxiety meet the criteria?

Diagnostic Manual Definition of Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety disorders, according to the DSM-5-TR, the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual, are “disorders that share features of excessive fear and anxiety… Anxiety disorders differ from developmentally normative fear or anxiety by being excessive or persisting beyond developmentally appropriate periods…typically lasting 6 months or more” (American Psychiatric Association, 2022).

Consequently, the level and duration of fear and anxiety are key factors in what comprises a disorder. For example, two weeks spent stressing over an interview is normal. Suffering months of debilitating dread about the idea of being interviewed, and then sabotaging future employment opportunities because of it, is not.

Jesus tells us in Matt. 6:34 to avoid spending our life in chronic anxiety. He instructs us instead to deal with each day’s troubles as they come and not worry about troubles that haven’t yet taken place. He wasn’t just giving us a set of rules. Jesus knew that chronic worry leads to great harm if left unchecked.

Harmful Impacts of Chronic Anxiety

Healthline online breaks down the different impacts that long-term exposure to high stress has on the body. Physically, it can lead to excessive weight gain or loss. Cardiovascular issues could also arise, such as high blood pressure and heart disease, which increase the risk of coronary events such as heart attacks.

Other problems include digestive issues such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or chronic infections. Those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) “may be at an increased risk of hospitalization from anxiety-related complications” (Cherney, 2022). Muscle tension, depression, and isolation from social activities compound the issue.

Neurologically, the impacts of chronic stress are just as damaging. Stress triggers the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. This is the primary pathway that kicks in the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn reflexes. When the HPA is activated for too long, this can cause:

• Hormonal imbalances that affect mood and cognition
• Neurochemical disruptions that interfere with serotonin and dopamine (key players in emotional regulation)
• Overstimulation of the amygdala, making you more anxious or reactive
• Damage to the hippocampus, which is vital for memory and learning
• Reduced function in the prefrontal cortex, impairing focus, planning, and decision-making (The Connection Between Stress and Neurological Disorders, 2025).

When fight, flight, freeze, and fawn remain in overdrive, the autonomic nervous system never allows for the “parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) system that helps you recover” (Ibid). The brain needs this permission to rest and digest. Without it, lasting changes occur in the structure and function of the brain, which can lead to depression and/or anxiety disorders from an overstimulated amygdala (Ibid).

Types of Anxiety Disorders

Now that we have an idea of how anxiety affects the body and brain, let’s take a closer look at the actual disorders and their diagnostic criteria. Please note that this is a general overview of each disorder. It is not meant to be used for personal diagnosis. If you believe you or someone you know might have an anxiety disorder, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional for help.

The following are general overviews from the DSM-5-TR:

Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Diagnostic Criteria

Includes excessive anxiety about events or activities (such as work or school performance). Signs and symptoms are:

• Restlessness
• Getting tired easily
• Difficulty concentrating or mind going blank
• Irritability
• Muscle tension
• Poor sleep

Panic Disorder

Includes recurrent unexpected panic attacks. Symptoms of a panic attack include:

• Palpitations, pounding heart, or accelerated heart rate
• Sweating
• Trembling or shaking
• Sensations of shortness of breath or smothering
• Feelings of choking
• Chest pain or discomfort
• Nausea or abdominal distress
• Feeling dizzy, unsteady, light-headed, or faint
• Chills or heat sensations
• Paresthesia (numbness or tingling sensations)
• Derealization (feelings of unreality) or depersonalization (being detached from oneself)
• Fear of losing control or “going crazy”
• Fear of dying

Agoraphobia

Includes excessive anxiety about two (or more) of the following five situations:

• Using public transportation
• Being in open spaces
• Being in enclosed places
• Standing in line or being in a crowd
• Being outside of the home alone

Social Anxiety Disorder

Includes excessive anxiety about social situations. (Some examples: having a conversation, meeting a stranger, being observed eating or drinking, performing in front of others – e.g., giving a speech). The person fears negative evaluation, such as being humiliated or embarrassed, and being rejected by or offending others.

Specific Phobias

Includes excessive anxiety about a specific object or situation (e.g., flying, heights, animals, receiving an injection, seeing blood). The phobic object or situation provokes anxiety that is out of proportion to the actual danger posed by the specific object or situation.

Separation Anxiety in Adults

Includes developmentally inappropriate and excessive anxiety concerning separation from attachment figures. The individual may show:

• Excessive distress about being separated from home or from major attachment figures.
• Excessive worry about losing major attachment figures or about possible harm to them, such as illness, injury, disasters, or death.
• Excessive worry about experiencing an untoward event (e.g., getting lost, being kidnapped, having an accident, becoming ill) that causes separation from a major attachment figure.
• Reluctance or refusal to go out, away from home, to school, to work, or elsewhere because of fear of separation.
• Excessive fear of or reluctance about being alone or without major attachment figures at home or in other settings.
• Reluctance or refusal to sleep away from home or to go to sleep without being near a major attachment figure.
• Repeated nightmares involving the theme of separation.
• Repeated complaints of physical symptoms when separation from major attachment figures occurs or is anticipated.

The fear, anxiety, or avoidance is persistent, lasting at least 4 weeks in children and adolescents and typically 6 months or more in adults (Ibid).

OCD and PTSD

While OCD and PTSD are not classified as anxiety disorders, they do share overlapping mechanisms, including excessive fear or anxiety that significantly impact vocational and social functioning. It’s important to get help with these or any of the other disorders on the list, as they significantly affect daily functioning.

How Anxiety Manifests in Daily Life

Anxiety disorders negatively influence relational, educational, or vocational functioning. While acute stress might cause occasional disruption such as missing a day of work, chronic stress from an anxiety disorder has a much more outsized impact. Some of these impacts include:

Workplace – Procrastination, over-preparation, avoidance of meetings, burnout, loss of employment.

Relationships – Reassurance seeking, people-pleasing behaviors, conflict avoidance, explosive confrontations, emotional withdrawal.

Parenting – Hypervigilance, overprotection, difficulty tolerating child distress, or dissociation.

Decision-making – Rumination, fear of mistakes, avoidance behaviors, sticking with what is safe.

Treatments

These impacts can seem overwhelming. It may seem as if nothing can be done to resolve the never-ending cycle of dread that comes with having an anxiety disorder. But the following therapies from qualified mental health professionals are effective treatments:

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): A licensed therapist trained in CBT helps clients identify, understand, and modify their anxiety-related thought and behavior patterns through regular sessions.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT): DBT incorporates the philosophical practice of dialectics, in which multiple or even contradictory ideas are examined, combining acceptance and change at the same time.

Exposure therapy: A form of therapy involving gradually exposing the individual to feared situations in a safe and controlled environment, with the ultimate aim of reducing the associated anxiety.

Group therapy: Refers to therapeutic settings that involve multiple participants in addition to a single healthcare provider (Anxiety.org, 2016).

Somatic Therapies: Somatically based therapies such as EMDR, IFS, or Lifespan Integration help individuals to integrate sources of trauma that may have triggered the initial disorder.

SSRIs, SNRIs, and Other Medications: While not therapies, antidepressants have been proven to be effective treatments.

Techniques for Managing Anxiety:

It’s good to note that we can also improve our anxiety prognosis through managing our own behaviors, emotions, and thoughts. This can be seen with techniques such as:

• Mindfulness exercises and deep breathing exercises, prayer, or meditation.
• Physical activities such as running, walking, yoga, cycling, etc.
• Practicing good nutrition and limiting sugar, alcohol, and caffeine (The Connection Between Stress and Neurological Disorders, 2025).

Conclusion

Anxiety disorders are common and impact millions of people every day. With proper diagnosis, therapy, and techniques, anxiety can be treated. God desires our wholeness. As the Bible says:

…for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. – 2 Timothy 1:7 ESV