Articles on Worry and Anxiety

  Individuals with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) worry frequently and intensely most days, about common life situations (for example, relationships, finances, and routine activities like paying bills, meeting deadlines). Relative to non-anxious people, individuals with GAD tend to have a poorer understanding of their emotions, feel their negative emotions more intensely, and have a lot…

  Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a chronic condition characterized by excessive and ‘all-consuming’ worry that occurs more often than not. When people with GAD worry, this triggers a series of “what if” questions and thoughts about worst-case scenarios. People with GAD tend to report that they experience difficulty paying attention to other things when…

  We tend to think of people who experience chronic worry and anxiety as deliberate, cautious and risk averse– always thinking ahead to the worst case scenario and possible ways that situations may end in catastrophe. But there are times when anxiety can cause people to act impulsively. For example, when people are in the…

    An estimated 7 to 12 percent of Americans and Canadians will be diagnosed with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) at some point in their life, with women twice as likely as men to develop the disorder. Rates of PTSD are higher among combat veterans. For example, 300,000 veterans in the United States, many of…

  People who are prone to anxiety, worry, and panic attacks are often high in anxiety sensitivity (AS), the fear of experiencing uncomfortable sensations such as a racing heart, shortness of breath, a tightening of the chest, dizziness, and sweating. Although these sensations can be unpleasant, they are not dangerous; rather, they are the result…

It is well established that physical exercise is good for you. Most people know that frequent exercise is protective against chronic illnesses and medical conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and osteoporosis (just to name a few). A growing body of research is also suggesting some benefits of exercise for psychological functioning. Over time,…

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a psychological condition characterized by excessive and uncontrollable worry across many life domains (for example, health, work, finances, and relationships). When people with GAD are worrying, it is common for them to feel tension in their body, to experience headaches, and to have difficulty falling asleep. But what you may…

We all worry from time to time. Worrying gets activated when we are not certain how a situation is going to turn out, especially when there is potential for things not to turn out well. Worry has been described as a type of self-talk that is full of “what if” questions and thoughts about the…

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a chronic condition whose central feature is excessive anxiety and worry. People with GAD worry about the same sorts of things as people who do not struggle with anxiety – relationships, doing well at work and at school, and health. The difference is that people with GAD report that they…

With the growing acceptance and use of health care services online, internet-delivered cognitive-behavioural treatment (iCBT) can offer the advantage of being cost effective and easily accessible to people with severe anxiety who are hesitant to seek face-to-face treatment (Mewton et al., 2014). CBT is recognized as an effective treatment for anxiety disorders (Mewton et al.,…