How to Recognize General Anxiety Disorder Causes

Uncertainty remains about the causes of general anxiety disorder and other related disorders, such as social anxiety and panic disorders. Although many people assume that such disorders have their roots in traumatic incidents, some research shows that anxiety disorders are, at least in part, genetic. Some people who experience traumatic or terrifying incidents develop anxiety disorders, while others don't. Sometimes such incidents trigger long-latent predispositions toward anxiety.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Journal

Recognize General Anxiety Disorder Causes in Your Own Life

1. Try to recognize the causes in your own life. If you are successful in recognizing the causes and triggers of general anxiety disorder in your own life, you may have a better chance of preventing such triggers and avoiding some of its symptoms in the future.

2. Review your family history. If a parent or sibling has had an anxiety disorder, your risk of developing a related disorder is greater, either because of similar genetic predisposition, shared environmental factors or both.

3. Identify any stressful or frightening events that may have occurred in your life in the period immediately preceding the onset of your general anxiety disorder symptoms. Even if you have a genetic predisposition toward an anxiety disorder, the way such tendencies generally work is that they set the stage for an incident that triggers the disorder.

Recognize Causes and Triggers of General Anxiety Disorder Symptoms

4. Maintain a daily diary or journal where you record events and incidents in your daily life that may have caused you excessive worries and anxieties or triggered other symptoms of general anxiety disorder.

5. Work on your own or, preferably, with a therapist to identify patterns or recurring similar incidents that always seem to become causes of anxiety or other symptoms.

6. Learn to distinguish between external events and the interpretations you make so that you can identify causes of general anxiety disorder and its symptoms among your thought processes and tendencies and eventually exercise control over these tendencies.

Tips & Warnings

• Researchers have isolated one gene variant that is three times more likely to be present in people with general anxiety disorder. In this variation of the gene 5-HTT, metabolism of serotonin is accelerated, diminishing the brain's serotonin supply. Low levels of brain serotonin have been measured in people with general anxiety disorder, but similar conditions also exist in people with other mental disorders including depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
• Don't become so wrapped up in trying to recognize the root causes of general anxiety disorder that you fail to focus on the triggering causes of difficulties and symptoms that you experience daily due to the disorder. After all, you are much more able to address these triggers than to alter your personal genetic makeup.

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