Anxiety Flashcards
What is Anxiety?
- Feeling of uneasiness, apprehension uncertainty, dread.
- Deep level: erosion self-esteem/worth.
Most common mental illness
Mild Anxiety
SX: only slight discomfort, fidgeting
- Increases alertness/ awareness/ focus
- Tension of day-to-day living.
- Motivates learning plus creativity.
Moderate Anxiety
- More disturbing – know somethings wrong – nervous/agitated.
SELECTIVE INATTENTION: only certain things are seat in her, unless pointed out.
Physical sx: muscular tension, restlessness, increased heart rate and respiratory rate, sweating , mild somatic (gastric discomfort, headache urinary agency.)
Severe Anxiety
- Patient can only focus on one thing and nothing else.
- Attention span is extremely limited.
- Can’t learn think or problems off – feel dazed or confused.
- Increased physical plus emotional symptoms: headache, nausea, dizziness, insomnia, trembling, hyperventilation, impeding doom/ dread.
- Autonomic behavior focused on relieving anxiety
Panic
FIGHT OR FLIGHT ( FREEZE )
- Person unable to communicate or function effectively.
- May experience psychosis (can’t tell what’s real or not) – hallucinations or delusions.
- Behaviors: screaming, pacing running shouting or extreme withdrawal. Increase vital signs.
Compensation ( Defense mechanism)
Covers up for a perceived weakness, by strongly, emphasizing a feature that he/she considers more desirable.
Ex: a businessman perceive, his small physical stature negatively. He tries to overcome this by being aggressive, forceful and controlling in his business dealings.
Denial ( defense mechanism )
Avoidance of disagreeable realities, ignoring, or refusing to recognize them, the simplest and most primitive of all defense mechanisms.
Example, Miss P has just been told that her breast biopsy indicates malignancy. When her husband visits her that evening, she tells him that no one has discussed the laboratory results with her.
Displacement: Defense mechanism
Shift of emotion from a person or object to another, usually neutral or less dangerous person or object.
Example a four-year-old boys angry, because he had just been punished by his mother for drawing on his bedroom walls. He begins to play war with his soldier, toys and has to fight with each other.
Dissociation: Defense mechanism
The separation of a group of mental or behavioral process from the rest of the persons, consciousness or identity
Example: a man is brought to the emergency room by the police, and is unable to explain who he is, and where he lives or works.
Identification: defense mechanism
Process by which a person tries to become like someone else he or she admires by taking on thoughts, mannerisms or taste of that person.
Example: Sally, a 15 year old has her hairstyle like that of her young English teacher, whom she at admires.
Intellectualization: defense mechanism
Excessive reasoning, or logic is used to avoid experiencing disturbing feelings.
Example: a woman avoids, dealing with her anxiety in shopping malls by explaining how shopping is a frivolous waste of time and money.
Introjection: defense mechanism
Intense identification, in which a person incorporates qualities or values of another person or group into his/her own ego structure. It is one of the earliest mechanisms of the child, important information of conscience.
Example: 8-year-old Jimmy tells his three year old sister “don’t scribble in your book of nursery rhymes, just look at the pretty pictures” thus expressing his parents values
Isolation: defense mechanism
Splitting off of emotional components of a thought which may be temporary or long-term.
Example: a medical student dissects a cadaver for her anatomy course, without being disturbed by thoughts of death.
Projection: defense mechanism
Attributing one starts or impulse to another person. Through this process, one can attribute intolerable wishes, emotional feelings, or motivation to another person.
Example: A young woman who denies she has sexual feelings about her coworker, accuses him without basis of trying to seduce her.
Rationalization: defense mechanism
Offering a socially acceptable or apparently logical explanation to justify or make acceptable otherwise unacceptable impulses, feelings, behaviors, and motives.
Example: John tells an examination and complains that the lectures were not well organized or clearly presented.
