Nearly everyone experiences anxiety from time to time, but developing an anxiety disorder is a completely different matter — one that can cast a long shadow over your life. Nearly one-third of adults in the United States have some experience with an anxiety disorder, which is the most common mental health issue in the country.
While medications and psychotherapy work well for some, others continue to be held prisoner by their anxiety despite the treatments. If this sounds familiar, the team here at Vital TMS Therapy wants to draw your attention to another, highly effective, treatment option — transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
Here’s a look at the different types of anxiety disorders and how TMS can play a valuable role in helping you to find much-needed relief from the constant worry and fear.
Types of anxiety disorders
As we mentioned, most everyone experiences brief periods of anxiety throughout their lives, but when unrelenting anxiety becomes the center of your world, it’s typically a disorder. There are many different types of anxiety disorders and the most common include:
- Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) — feeling generally anxious without any precipitating event
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) — obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — ongoing anxiety and fear after a traumatic event or experience
- Panic disorder — frequent panic attacks
- Social phobia or social anxiety disorder — fear of social situations
While each of these is a unique disorder, the underlying anxiety is common to all of them.
What is anxiety?
When you experience anxiety, your sympathetic nervous system initiates a fight-or-flight response and releases stress hormones that:
- Create muscle tension
- Raise your heart rate
- Dilate your pupils
- Cause your breathing to become more shallow
These physiological reactions equip your body with the tools it needs to protect itself in times of danger and are only designed for the short term.
When you have an anxiety disorder, your body can be stuck in this fight-or-flight response, which not only affects your physical health, but can also greatly impact your mental health. In fact, many people with ongoing anxiety also develop major depressive disorder or a substance use disorder in an attempt to self medicate.
TMS and anxiety disorders
The frontline treatments for anxiety disorders have traditionally included a combination of psychotherapy and medications. While psychotherapies, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, can be effective, the medications to treat anxiety carry some addiction risks, and they don’t work for everyone.
At our practice, we’ve had great success helping patients with treatment-resistant anxiety disorders find relief through TMS therapy.
With TMS, we send magnetic pulses into the areas of your brain that are associated with anxiety. These pulses affect how your neurotransmitters function, helping them to find healthier pathways that can relieve your overriding anxiety.
While there are many studies on the efficacy of TMS therapy for depression, there are fewer when it comes to anxiety disorders. This is changing quickly as mental health professionals are finding that TMS can be very successful in relieving difficult-to-treat conditions like OCD and PTSD.
For our part, based on our successes and the fact that TMS is noninvasive and well-tolerated, we feel that TMS can play a key role in relieving your anxiety.
If you’d like to learn more about treating anxiety disorders with TMS therapy, please contact the team at Vital TMS Therapy to set up a consultation.
