A smart businessman with a bright future had quickly climbed the corporate ladder, but when he was offered a promotion that would put him at the top of his division, he turned it down, jeopardising his career. The thought of being the centre of attention in a major meeting threw him into a blind, desperate panic with flushing, sweating, and heart palpitations.
He has circumscribed Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), which is an intense, irrational, and persistent fear of being scrutinised or negatively evaluated by other people. People with SAD, or Social Phobia, are sensitive to criticism and rejection, have difficulty asserting themselves, and suffer from low self-esteem. Social anxiety disorder can be circumscribed, in which the sufferer only fears being scrutinised at work, or generalized, a far more debilitating condition that can make everything from walking to a table at a restaurant to attending your best friend’s wedding a cause for sheer terror.
Two antidepressant drugs, Effexor and Zoloft, have been added to a list of about a dozen approved medications for social anxiety disorder, sparking renewed interest in this little-known condition. Is social anxiety disorder just another name for being really shy?
Putting the Brakes on Life
Many people are a little shy, and they might be somewhat uncomfortable in situations such as going to a party where they don’t know anyone, but they can do it. They give themselves a push, and go to the party, after a while they relax and talk to people. The social phobic person would be overwhelmed by such anxiety that they might have nausea, sweating, heart racing, dizziness, and would avoid it if at all possible.
So while being shy can complicate your life, having social phobia can stop it dead. The hallmark of social anxiety disorder is that it impairs your function. Many adolescents have social anxiety disorder, and might be so overwhelmed by the fear of standing up to give a report that they can’t complete assignments and fail classes. For the businessman, social anxiety disorder endangered his career advancement.
Some patients are very competent, but have jobs well below their capacity because they’re afraid of asking for a promotion or going out and looking for a better job. This might explain why some 70% of people with SAD are on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale and nearly 50% fail to finish high school.
Causes Of Anxiety Disorder
Some anxiety disorders seem to affect men and women in equal numbers but others are more common in one sex. Panic disorders, phobias, and generalised anxiety are twice as common in women than in men, but obsessive-compulsive disorder and social anxiety affect both sexes equally. Also, panic disorders, social anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders tend to start early in life, but generalised anxiety disorders start a bit later.
The effects can also vary according to how old a person is. If they can’t go to work or school because avoidance is part of their anxiety, it can have a huge impact on their development, so having anxiety early in life can have a major effect. The behaviour associated with the disorder then has more of an effect on the person’s life.
Anxiety Disorder is called the Great Pretender, because it frequently looks like other illnesses, but with a good screening by a health professional and care these complications are treatable. Stress can contribute to all sorts of illnesses, and has a minor effect in some conditions and a major impact on others. Gastrointestinal disorders are highly stress sensitive, but gall bladder disease, for example, is not usually affected by stress levels.
The relationship between anxiety and health is known as Health Anxiety, and consists of excessive worries about health which are usually based on a symptom that a person has a hard time being reassured about. There may be an underlying cause that hasn’t been fully explained, but this is highly treatable. Some people may also have an anxiety disorder that makes them excessively fearful of catching an illness. Hypochondria is when you fear that you have an illness that has not been detected, Health Anxiety is being afraid that you might contract an illness.
Anxiety/panic attacks may be due to something terrible that happened as a child. The trigger can be a remembered event, a vaguely remembered event, or even a forgotten early childhood experience that makes the body prone to anxiety. Remember that this type of anxiety is also treatable without having to go back into the past and find out what happened.