Generalized anxiety disorders are when you have a persisting and disproportionately large amount of stress and worry about various events and/or activities, including your home routine. This nagging worry, and even panic, is very hard to bring down and will affect your physical health as much as, your mental and emotional health.
Oftentimes, people dealing with GAD are experiencing worry around money, job loss, bills, relationships, divorce, or some other major life stressor. In order to be diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, this worry, stress, and anxiety must last at least 6 months.
Social anxiety disorder involves severe anxiety specifically about social situations and events like hanging out with friends in crowded places. If you have social anxiety, you’ve probably noticed intense fears connected to your self-consciousness, the fear of embarrassing yourself or your friends, and/or the fear of being negatively judged by others.
Typically, the way that someone deals with social anxiety is they give into these fears and decide to avoid the following experiences:
- Social interactions
- Speaking with others
- Initiating conversations
- Ongoing conversations (prolonged conversations)
- Being the center of attention
This can become incredibly debilitating, especially for individuals that prefer to be social but are unable to do so because of their severe anxiety.