If I Have Suffered From An Anxiety Disorder, Am I Likely To Continue To Experience Anxiety Or Will It Go Away?

Dr. George Pratt answers the question: 'Will Anxiety Disorder Symptoms Persist?'

ByABC News
April 15, 2008, 3:38 PM

— -- Question: If I have suffered from an anxiety disorder, am I likely to continue to experience anxiety or will it go away?

Answer: Well, anxiety is part of the human experience, I'm afraid. It has some productive aspects as well.

We know that, with anxiety, we're secreting various stress hormones that cause us to be more alert and awake and aware, and it can serve to help us in dangerous situations such as escape.

Generally what happens, we don't run into too of many of those opportunities where we have to escape these days.

So the negative side is with the stress hormones, we can start to feel anxious and, even at some lower grades, we can feel almost, it's almost like a refrigerator hum, a 60-cycle sense of energy.

What can be done is there's a variety of techniques that are available, but once the tools are in place to manage anxiety states in a healthy way, really during everyday living, there really shouldn't be a perception of anxiety there. It still is there to be either productive to help us or it needs treatment that it's unproductive anxiety. So that's why the concept of anxiety as both a benefit and as something to manage is a very important consideration.

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