Anxiety disorders explained from a psycho-family perspective
When is anxiety considered maladaptive? What developmental skills has the anxious person failed to accomplish? What kind of family did she live in?
Physiological anxiety and pathological anxiety
Anxiety, contrary to popular belief, may also have an adaptive function . In fact, it represents an attack-flight reaction , which causes the organism to act and therefore to defend itself in conditions of danger (real or perceived).
However, it is also true that when the physiological state of anxiety lasts too long, psychological, physical and behavioral disorders of various kinds can occur. In this second case, we will rather speak of pathological anxiety with a maladaptive (rather than adaptive) function because it becomes difficult to manage, being excessive.
Among the different pathological anxieties, we can distinguish:
- performance anxiety;
- judgment anxiety, such as social anxiety;
- specific anxiety, such as phobias
What unites the three types is loss of control .
As for cognitive factors, it is possible to trace the presence of specific patterns : ideas and thought patterns that lead the person to overestimate the danger and patterns of…
