Fear is a basic emotion, i.e. every human being can feel fear. Fear is at the same time an activating emotion, which activates the fearful being to reduce the fear.
Anxiety disorders, on the other hand, are non-rational or exaggerated reactions of a living being. The activation is caused by internal or external triggers or without any reason.
The Intern. Classification of Mental Disorders, edition 10 (abbreviation: ICD10) distinguishes different types of primary anxiety. It should be mentioned that anxiety in these forms can also occur in other mental disorders and diseases as a secondary symptom.
Important: This page is intended to provide education for patients with anxiety disorder. It is not sufficient for self-diagnosis. I, Davor Antunovic, strongly advise against this. If you have symptoms that you find here, I ask you either to contact your trusted doctor or to contact me.
Internet research regarding your own symptomatology can be very disturbing. As a therapist and scientist, I am committed to the truth based on facts. Please note that according to studies, approximately 38% of participants develop more anxiety as a result of researching their own symptoms.* The following information is therefore presented as factually as possible. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Anxiety disorders are fears that are not appropriate to the situation or health condition. In the further course of this page we distinguish anxiety disorders in the medical understanding. It is important to note that the ICD10 only summarizes and names the symptomatology, but does not offer a conclusive explanation of how the respective anxiety disorder arises and how to eliminate it.
For this, different therapeutic methods have different views. Both how anxiety disorders arise and, of course, how they can be eliminated. In my own opinion, a so-called multimodal approach, i.e. an approach that tries to combine these methods, allows the greatest chance of treatment success.
Detailed information on the following topics:
Panic attack
Panic disorder
Agoraphobia
Generalized anxiety disorder
Phobias
Sources: For the contents of the links are the website operators themselves responsible! Also I do not take responsibility for the correctness of the data. If you have reason to believe that a source does not seem to be correct, please contact me.
* www.aerzteblatt.de/pp/lit0213