These are common questions.
Anxiety and depression are two of the most prevalent ailments in society today. People who suffer from one typically suffer from a version of the other as well.
While anxiety and depression are two different conditions with different diagnostic criteria, they are interconnected in a variety of ways.
Anxiety symptoms often occur as excessive worry over negative issues that we have to deal with on a daily basis. Anxiety often leads to panic, loss of sleep, heart palpitations, or panic attacks.
For people who are diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, such symptoms are constant and progressive. They disrupt the person’s life and make it difficult (or even impossible) to live a normal life.
Relationships become strained. They may turn to drugs or alcohol. They often become angry and lash out against loved ones. More often than not, this degresses into a state of depression.
Depression presents itself as a partial or complete withdrawal from life. A depressed person is usually engulfed in feeling of hopelessness and deapair. They may stop going to social events or to work. They may stop eating. They may even stop getting out of bed in the morning.
Sometimes a diagnosis of depression is not related to anxiety issues… but it’s rare.
“Very often, we find that people have more than one condition — both depression and anxiety disorder”, according to Dr. Charles Goodstein, professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine, in an interview for WebMD. “As a matter of fact, it’s very hard to find patients who are depressed who don’t also have anxiety. It’s equally hard to find people with anxiety who don’t have some depression.”
One of the keys to understanding both anxiety and depression is accepting the fact that external events may not be the cause. For generations, we were told, “Get over it! Grow up and grow a thick skin!”
While this may be good advice for some, it has little effect on a person with clinical depression or an anxiety disorder. These are biological responses that are pre-programmed into our DNA, handed down from our family trees.
Some people even spend years in traditional psychoanalysis trying to dig up childhood causes of anxiety or depression. This can often be a fruitless waste of time because they were just born with it.
It may be better to focus on the present by learning how to deal with your anxiety and depression in the present moment and in the future… because you can’t go back and change the past anyway.
When we accept that anxiety and depression are not only related, but are biological in nature, we can be open to modern treatments that have never been available before in human history. Where our great-grandparents just had to suffer with it until they died, we have much better options.
A wide variety of treatments and therapies are now not only available, but commonplace. Even social workers and substance abuse counselors are now trained to recognize anxiety symptoms and depression… and can help you find the treatment you need.
Attacking anxiety and depression may or may not include medication. While the Internet is full of horror stories about people who suffer bizarre side effects from certain medications, statistics show that the vast majority of people are helped by them when taken under medical supervision in conjunction with cognitive-behavioral therapy.
The best way to find out if you have anxiety or depression or a combination of both is to to talk to your doctor. Call him or her today. Take charge of your life. Get the help you need.
Click here to watch a short video about the ROOT CAUSE of all anxiety.
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