Anxiety Flashcards
Anxiety vs Fear
Fear is a reaction to a specific danger
Anxiety is a vague sense of dread relating to unspecified danger
Mild Anxiety Behaviors
- Restlessness
- Irritability
- Mild tension-relieving behaviors e.g., nail biting, foot or finger tapping, fidgeting
Moderate Anxiety Behaviors
- Increased pulse & respiration
- Gastric discomfort
- Headache
- Urinary frequency
- Voice tremors and shaking
Severe Anxiety Behaviors
- Hyperventilation
- Sense of impending doom or dread
Somatic symptoms (no pathological reasoning)
- Dizziness
- Insomnia
- Trembling
- Pounding heart
Panic Level Anxiety
- Person is unable to process, impending doom
- Lose touch with reality, feels like she/he is dying
- Confusion
- shouting
- may hallucinate
Mild Anxiety Coping Mechanisms
- Crying, sleeping, yawning, laughing, cursing, physical exercise, daydreaming
- Oral behavior: smoking, drinking
- Superficiality: lack of eye contact, use of cliches, limited self disclosure
Moderate, Severe, and Panic Anxiety Coping Mechanisms
· Attack behavior: anger, hostility
· Constructive: problem solving approach
· ** Withdrawal behavior:** Physically and emotionally, apathetic
· ** Compromise:** changing usual ways of coping
Defense Mechanism
· Or coping styles, are automatic psychological processes that protect the individual against anxiety and from the awareness of internal or external dangers or stressors.
· Relief behavior used by everyone
· Helps people cope
· Protect person from feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness
· Manage conflict
· Unconscious level, little awareness
Adaptive Defense Mechanisms
· Relief behavior used by everyone
· Helps people cope
· Protect person from feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness
· Manage conflict
· Unconscious level, little awareness
Maladaptive Uses of Defense Mechanisms
· Distort reality, interfere with relationships, limit ability to work
· Little control over events
· Form of self-deception
· Not realistic way of coping
Different Defense Mechanisms
- Altruism
- Sublimation
- Humor
- Suppression
- Repression
- Displacement
- Somatization
- Isolation
- Intellectualization
- Reaction formation (overcompensation)
- Undoing
- Rationalization
- Dissociation
- Splitting
- Projection
- Blaming or scape goating, this is the root of prejudice
- Denial
Stimuli that can contribute to anxiety in the elderly
· Multiple losses
· Sensory impairment
· Fear of illness and death
Anxiety in chronic illnesses stimuli
· Multiple losses
· Unknown course of illness
· Growing dependency on others
- Fear of ilness and death
Nursing Dx
· Anxiety
· Fear
· Ineffective coping
· Deficient diversional activity
· Social isolation
· Ineffective role performance
· Disturbed thought processes
· Posttrauma syndrome
· Disturbed sleep pattern
· Sleep deprivation
· Fatigue
· Hopelessness
· Chronic low self-esteem
· Spiritual distress
· Self care deficit
· Impaired skin integrity
· Imbalanced nutrition: less than body requirements
· Imbalanced nutrition: more than body requirements
Goals
· Coping: Manage stress
· _ Self-esteem_: Improve personal judgment of self-worth
· _ Knowledge: Disease process:_ improve understanding about disease
