Chronically worried individuals are also more likely to lack confidence in their problem solving ability, perceive problems as threats, become easily frustrated when dealing with a problem, and are pessimistic about the outcome of problem-solving efforts.Seriously anxious people find it difficult to control their worry and typically experience symptoms like restlessness, fatigue, difficulty in concentrating, irritability, muscle tension and sleep disturbance. Theories
Avoidance model
The avoidance model of worry (AMW) theorizes that worry is a verbal linguistic, thought based activity, which arises as an attempt to inhibit vivid mental imagery and associated somatic and emotional activation. This inhibition precludes the emotional processing of fear that is theoretically necessary for successful habituation and extinction of feared stimuli. Worry is reinforced as a coping technique due to the fact that most worries never actually occur, leaving the worrier with a feeling of having successfully controlled the feared situation, without the unpleasant sensations associated with exposure. Noteworthy, studies also show that visual worry, i.e. worrying that occurs in visual modality, is also associated with increased anxiety and other psychopathology symptoms. Cognitive model
This model explains pathological worry to be an interaction between involuntary (bottom-up) processes, such as habitual biases in attention and interpretation favoring threat content, and voluntary (top-down) processes, such as attentional control. Emotional processing biases influence the probability of threat representations into the awareness as intruding negative or positive thoughts.
Management
The worry system is activated from exposure to a potential triggering event, traumatic experience or vulnerability, this brings worrisome thoughts and feelings which bring about physical stress reactions and response to avoid worrisome behavior, to ensure allostasis. But under the crisis this activity feeds back into the first worrisome thoughts and feelings which generates and strengthens the vicious worry cycle. Relaxation, risk assessment, worry exposure and behavior prevention have been proven effective in curbing the excessive worry, a chief feature of generalized anxiety disorder. Cognitive behavioral techniques hasnt branched out enough to address the problem holistically but therapy can control or diminish worry. See also
References
Further reading
Kate Sweeny; Michael D. Dooley (18 April 2017). "The surprising upsides of worry". Social and Personality Psychology Compass. 11 (4): e12311. doi:10.1111/spc3.12311. External links
Current theoretical models of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD): Conceptual review and treatment implications