Anxiety Disorders

Triple Vulerabilty Model of Anxiety

Biological - genetic and neuralbiological factors

Psychological - early experiences, early trauma

Specific - specific triggers or events (shapes how we deal with anxiety)

Classical conditioning

learning to associate anxiety, fear. etc. with a specific object (ex. loud noises after an accident)

Maintaining anxiety

associating responses with more or less desirable outcomes (ex. avoidance)

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Worrying about a variety of different things instead of being focused on a specific object/event, occurs most days than not, difficult to turn off

Panic attack

intense psychological and thought based reactions

Phobias

most common anxiety type - intense fear of something specific that disrupts daily function

Phobia heritability

Genetic predisposition to phobias, lack of positive experiences with fear object because of parent avoidance

Phobia Comorbidity

Often people experience more phobias than one

Social Anxiety Disorder

Intense fear of social situations, fear of being evaluated, recieving criticism, negative judgement