What Generalized Anxiety Disorder Looks Like
One of the great ways to understand different human experiences is to examine them through the lens of an example. In this research, you’ll meet Melissa, a young woman suffering from a generalized anxiety disorder.
To know more about what generalized anxiety disorder looks like, take a peek into Melissa’s experiences.
Meet Melissa, a Super Hard Worker.
Melissa is a twenty-eight-year-old supervisor at a technology company. She’s been working at this company for about five years now, and in that short time, she’s been promoted twice.
Most recently, she was offered a management position. She currently supervises a team of ten other people, all wonderfully talented and brilliant professionals in the tech industry.
“Melissa works extremely hard to finish projects, lead her team, and positively impact the company. She works so hard that she’s usually stuck at the office long after hours to finish work and try to get ahead on various projects.”
She’s had to cancel dates and plans to meet friends and family on multiple occasions because she didn’t feel she could leave the office in the evenings.
Because she’s spending long days at work, Melissa doesn’t have much time to run errands, take care of herself, or tend to other matters in her personal life.
She tries her best to buy healthy foods to cook, but she’s often too busy to slow down and prepare anything.
“Sometimes she’ll order takeout, but usually, her meals consist of quick snacks and thermoses of coffee she grabs as she comes and goes from her apartment.”
When Melissa can spend some time at home, she’s usually thinking about her ever-growing to-do list she needs to conquer at work the next day.
Sometimes she’ll even grab her laptop out of her work bag to begin typing emails and working on one of her many projects. These at-home work sessions often keep her occupied late into the evening, interrupting her sleeping patterns.
When she does fall asleep, it isn’t uncommon for her to wake up in the middle of the night mid-thought about something she’s forgotten to do or needs to take care of when she returns to work.
Lately, Melissa’s been dealing with some challenges concerning her employees. Her team is composed of knowledgeable and talented people, and she feels lucky to be working with them, but lately, they’ve been causing her excessive stress.
Many of them have been sick lately, and whenever they need to stay home and rest, Melissa is left to pick up the slack to ensure their work is finished on time.
Whenever she hears her email or text alerts chime, she feels her heart pound in anticipation – she’s learned to associate the sound with another employee telling her they won’t be able to work that day, leaving her to tackle their workload alone.
Over the last few weeks, Melissa’s been plagued by killer headaches and stomach cramps. She chalked up her physical symptoms to her sporadic eating habits and the massive amount of time she spends behind a computer screen each day.
On top of the headaches, Melissa has struggled to maintain her focus. Sometimes she’ll even sit in front of her computer with the intent to do something and immediately forget what she was planning to do the moment she sat down.
These symptoms frightened Melissa, and since they were continuing for weeks, she determined that there must be something severe happening with her health.
Understanding How Generalized Anxiety Disorder Presents Itself in Melissa
After her physical symptoms persisted, she finally decided to schedule an appointment with her doctor. As Melissa explained to the doctor how she’s been feeling, she asked Melissa to explain more about what her life’s been like lately.
Melissa explained all her current work, projects, and professional responsibilities. After ruling out other common causes for her headaches and stomach cramps, Melissa’s doctor decided to ask more questions about her current lifestyle and emotional state.
“As Melissa and her doctor talked more, she realized that Melissa was likely suffering from a generalized anxiety disorder.”
The doctor explained why this diagnosis matched her experiences and symptoms so well, highlighting some key points from their discussion:
● Melissa described that her sleeping patterns were inconsistent and that her sleep was often interrupted by thoughts or concerns about something she needed to do the next day.
● Melissa described that she’d developed a physical reaction to certain stimuli, such as her email alerts chiming or her cell phone buzzing with a new message.
● Melissa described that she rarely (if ever) has time to do anything relaxing or enjoyable for herself.
● Melissa described that she spends most of her time on work-related activities or projects, even when she’s not at work.
● Melissa described that she’d canceled social plans to maintain her focus on projects happening at work.
● Melissa described her tendency to ignore her basic needs, such as stopping to eat and nourish her body, in favor of returning to work.
● Melissa described that she was beginning to forget basic, short-term memory bits of information, like why she sat down at her computer.
“With this information, the doctor built a collage of information that described Melissa’s unique experience with generalized anxiety disorder.”
The doctor noted that, while many of her experiences appeared to be coming from work, some other issues caused her concern, such as avoiding family and friends in favor of job-related tasks.
With this diagnosis, Melissa and her doctor began to work together to determine the best treatment plan. As a first step, Melissa’s doctor encouraged her to start using some basic techniques to gain control of her anxious thoughts, emotions, and behaviors during the work day.
With a better understanding of what it means to have a generalized anxiety disorder, Melissa can recognize when anxiety is taking too much control in her daily life so she can confront it more effectively.
