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Video Transcription:

Hey guys, I'm Kristen the anxiety therapist and today I'm going to be talking about what I like to call the four pillars of anxiety disorders and essentially what these are, are four different types of fear that are evident in different types of anxiety disorders.

So anxiety disorders is sort of the umbrella and then there are a bunch of different types of disorders that fall under that and each of them kind of focuses on a different type of fear. So how do you know when you're experiencing quote unquote normal levels of anxiety or stress and when does it cross the threshold into being considered a disorder?

Um well, if it begins to disrupt your life and there's an impairment in your daily functioning for an extended period of time, then you might be starting to question whether it's a disorder and maybe want to seek out some professional treatment. So, um the first type of fear is catastrophic thinking and this often occurs for people who have separation anxiety from a loved one, so maybe you're afraid to leave your partner or your parent because you're afraid they're going to get into a car accident and die something along those lines.

It's also involved in a lot of phobias. So if you have a fear of spiders or a fear of flying, there's often some sort of catastrophic outcome that you are worried about. Secondly, there's the fear of evaluation. Um this shows up with social anxiety disorder and, you know, a lot of people have a fear of public speaking, um that's a super common fear to have, but social anxiety disorder sort of um it manifests in other ways to where people can be in a social setting, even a small group of people, or even with one other person, but there's such a fear of being evaluated and judged um that they are sort of so caught up in their own thought processes of, what is this other person, or what are these other people thinking about me, that they aren't able to engage naturally with other people?

Um then you have the fear of loss of control and this shows up with panic disorder. So if you're someone who is having um panic attacks, you might be afraid of having re experiencing that feeling of not being in control of your body, right? When you're having a panic attack, your breathing is very heavy, your heart is racing, you have a fear of this sense of impending doom. Um you might feel like you're having a heart attack or dying and that's terrifying, right? And so there's this fear of your body losing control, but then also the fear of having another panic attack out in public, where you might not be able to get somewhere safe um fast enough.

And then lastly we have the fear of uncertainty, and this is super common for people who have generalized anxiety disorder, where their worry is um it sort of extends to a lot of different things, it's not necessarily focused on on one thing, as well as obsessive compulsive disorder.

And this is when people are fixated on their impulses or thoughts and they might do something repetitive lee or check something multiple times as a way to ease their anxiety. But what often happens is this actually strengthens the anxiety over time. Um and so treatment is usually involved in order to to sort of break those patterns and and um break those connections and in your in your brain between the thoughts and the compulsions.

So I hope this helps to clarify just kind of some of the different fears. Again, we have the catastrophic thinking, we have the fear of evaluation, we have the fear of losing control and then we have the fear of uncertainty. So if any of this resonates with you, feel free to reach out, ask questions, leave a comment and I'm happy to help in any way.

I can have a nice weekend, take care.

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