Muscle tension. Increased heart rate. Nausea. Racing thoughts. Anxiety is one of the most unpleasant human emotions. It’s also a normal human reaction to stressors and potential threats. It can even serve a protective function in certain situations.

Many people experience some level of temporary anxiety when faced with stressors such as financial concerns, times of great uncertainty or work pressure. Anxiety caused by a specific stressor can often be resolved without professional intervention, particularly for individuals who are resilient, have social support and practice coping skills.

For individuals struggling with an anxiety disorder, however, anxiety is recurrent and persistent, disruptive to daily life, and can’t always be attributed to a specific stressor. 

While anxiety can seemingly go away on its own in some cases, someone with an anxiety disorder may require specific interventions to prevent it from continuing or worsening.

We’ll talk about the difference between feeling anxious and having anxiety as well as how anxiety affects your everyday life when it doesn’t go away. Then we’ll discuss the treatment options that can help alleviate your anxiety, such as process-based therapy.

General anxiety disorder

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is the most common type of anxiety disorder. For a formal diagnosis of GAD, symptoms must be persistent for at least six months and consistent. Generalized anxiety disorder is also different from other anxious feelings because it can cause a variety of other symptoms that can interfere with your quality of life, including:

• Trouble concentrating
• Difficulty falling or staying asleep
• Feeling restless or irritable
• Having a sense of impending doom
• Headaches
• Gastrointestinal issues

How anxiety can influence your everyday life

Since it’s common to confuse an anxiety disorder with everyday anxious feelings, you might be tempted to wait and see if the symptoms go away on their own. But like any medical issue, anxiety is a disorder that requires treatment.

If your anxiety is left untreated, it can be persistent or worsening. Anxiety symptoms that aren’t addressed can interfere with your overall quality of life.

Left untreated, generalized anxiety disorder can worsen over time and cause a variety of struggles in your day-to-day life, including:

• Lack of productivity at work or home
• Strained relationships due to mood shifts and social withdrawal
• Finding it difficult to take the risks needed to reach your goals
• Impaired quality of life
• Physical health issues
• Increased risk of developing other mental health conditions
• Substance use

How to help anxiety that won’t go away on its own

Since anxiety disorder symptoms won’t improve on their own, it’s important to be proactive by seeking the proper treatment. No matter what severity of anxiety you’re struggling with, treatment with the proper therapy approach can help.

When it comes to alleviating your anxiety, process-based therapy, or PBT, can play a large role in helping your current symptoms as well as helping you manage them in the future.

Process-based therapy is a holistic clinical model that allows mental health care professionals to treat your entire being, not just your anxiety symptoms. It addresses your four core processes that are at the root of your anxiety disorder:

• Difficulty with emotions
• Difficulty with behaviors
• Difficulty with thoughts
• Difficulty with relationships

The core processes are improved through a personalized treatment plan of integrated interventions, such as mindful interventions, motivational enhancement and values clarification. These interventions are backed by clinical evidence and drawn from a variety of psychotherapies to reduce your anxiety symptoms and help you regain control over your emotional patterns.

Explore treatment options for generalized anxiety disorder

We understand that it can be hard to ask for help, especially when you’re experiencing feelings that are natural to feel every now and then, such as worry and uncertainty. But anxiety goes beyond everyday emotions. Anxiety can feel overwhelming and make it difficult to focus on anything else, causing you to feel out of control with your own feelings. But we’re here to help.

We have four levels of care to help alleviate your anxiety symptoms through PBT: Residential Treatment, Virtual Intensive Outpatient Program (vIOP), Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP) and Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP).

The framework of our clinic consists of evidence-based, clearly defined, data-driven and whole-person-centered care. Change is possible. When you’re ready to take the first step, reach out to our Admissions Concierge Team. We’ll take the next steps together, toward the fullest, brightest version of you.