It is understandable—and even expected—to feel more anxiety right now in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, social unrest, economic shifts, current politics, and ecological threats.
At Memor Health, an anxiety treatment center with anxiety therapists in Reno, more of our patients want to address and ease their feelings of anxiety, stress, depression, irritability, loneliness, insomnia, and hopelessness. We know they are not alone in feeling this way. When it is hard to know what the future holds, it’s easy to feel more worried, which is one of the signs of Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or GAD, is characterized by frequent and overwhelming worry about a number of different things. People with GAD may feel like a disaster is constantly awaiting them. As a result, they may become be overly concerned about money, health, family, work, or other issues. GAD affects about or 3.1% of the U.S. population in any given year, and women are twice as likely to be affected.
GAD is one of the five major types of anxiety disorders. The other four types include Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Social Phobia, or Social Anxiety Disorder.
What causes anxiety
If you are cycling through the same worries over and over again in your head, the first thing to know is that your brain is actually functioning relatively normally. On a low-stress day, 95% of our thoughts are almost exactly the same, as the day before. According to the National Science Foundation, the average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day, of which 80% focus on the negative and 95% repeat from the day before.
But when you experience a sustained amount of stress over more extended periods of time—say from a global health crisis—the amygdala and hippocampus in the brain may continue to create thought patterns that disrupt your daily life and cause high levels of anxiety. In addition, these higher levels of stress can trigger old wounds and traumas, of which you may or may not be consciously aware. So, while many people think that anxiety descends on you one day from out of nowhere, it is usually triggered by an unconscious thought pattern you already have that may be in overdrive.
What kind of anxiety treatments are available?
If you are experiencing elevated levels of different or new types of anxiety, one way to seek relief is to find a therapist. A licensed professional can help you find the source of your anxiety and create healthy strategies to help you cope with and mitigate anxious thoughts.
There are many types and modes of therapy, and each can be applied differently on an individual basis. Some of these include cognitive therapy, prescribed medication, and group therapy. Sometimes, psychiatrists may prescribe medications to help individuals seeking behavioral health treatment. Then, there are more holistic approaches to anxiety treatment, such as yoga, breathing techniques, meditation, and other options that work with the mind-body connection.
The types of services do we offer at our anxiety treatment center
At Memor Health, we treat all types of anxiety and work with a variety of mental health professionals who use psychiatry, therapy, and other holistic options to create a plan for you. Our psychiatrists and therapists work together to understand what medications, coping skills, and therapies would work best for each patient. Because we offer both psychiatry and psychotherapy, we can also give our patients a high continuity of care—which means that every one of our mental health professionals gets on the same page to support you. Then, they work together to offer highly effective treatments that work in tandem to help you address anxiety so that you can reach your fullest potential. We also include other therapeutic approaches, such as yoga and breathing techniques, which can help individuals calm their emotions in new ways through healthy techniques and with new insight. The real transformational work comes from a combination of modalities with a strong focus on the therapy itself.
Anxiety can feel like a deep dark hole that you have fallen into. At Memor Health, we help you find the tools (ie; skills to work towards new patterns of thinking and reacting) to build the ladder that will help you climb out providing relief from anxiety.
