Reference
Anxiety disorders
Anxiety disorders are a group of conditions characterized by persistent fear, worry, avoidance, or threat-focused patterns that interfere with daily life. They share overlap in symptoms and physiology, but they differ in what tends to trigger anxiety, how the cycle is maintained, and which treatment approaches are most often used in clinical practice (American Psychiatric Association, 2022; National Institute of Mental Health, 2024).
Educational content only. This page does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. New, severe, sudden, or concerning symptoms should be medically evaluated. If you cannot stay safe, contact local emergency services.
Anxiety Explained note
How to use this hub:
This page is a disorder-level map. Use it if you want a structured overview of major anxiety conditions, how they overlap, and where to read next.
If your experience feels more symptom-based than diagnosis-based, start with
Anxiety symptoms,
Why anxiety feels physical, or
Body-first vs mind-first anxiety.
Key takeaways
- Anxiety symptoms can be physical, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral. See Anxiety symptoms.
- Different disorders share overlap but differ in triggers, dominant fears, and maintaining cycles.
- Patterns such as avoidance, reassurance-seeking, and safety behaviors often reduce anxiety short-term and maintain it long-term.
- Evidence-based treatment is available for many anxiety disorders. See Anxiety treatment.
What counts as an anxiety disorder?
In diagnostic systems, anxiety disorders involve anxiety, fear, or avoidance that is persistent, disproportionate, or impairing. The specific form varies. Some disorders are organized around broad worry, some around panic, some around social evaluation, some around intrusive thoughts, and some around specific feared objects or situations (American Psychiatric Association, 2022).
This site also distinguishes between disorder-level categories and broader anxiety patterns. A person may identify with a diagnosis and also find it helpful to understand related concepts such as anxiety and uncertainty, catastrophizing, intrusive thoughts, or rumination.
Common anxiety disorders
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)
Generalized anxiety disorder involves frequent, hard-to-control worry across multiple life domains, often with restlessness, muscle tension, fatigue, irritability, and sleep disruption. It commonly overlaps with uncertainty-based anxiety, intolerance of uncertainty, overthinking, and rumination.
Panic disorder and panic attacks
Panic involves sudden surges of intense fear or discomfort with strong physical symptoms. Panic disorder refers to recurrent panic attacks plus ongoing concern or behavior change related to them. People often first seek information through symptom pages such as heart palpitations, chest pain, shortness of breath, or dizziness.
Compare Panic,
Panic attacks, and
Panic vs anxiety.
Social anxiety disorder
Social anxiety disorder involves fear of negative evaluation, embarrassment, or scrutiny in social or performance situations. It may present with anticipatory worry, post-event rumination, avoidance, and strong body symptoms in social contexts.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
Obsessive-compulsive disorder involves intrusive, unwanted thoughts, images, or urges and repetitive behaviors or mental rituals aimed at reducing distress. On this site, related concepts include intrusive thoughts, certainty-seeking, and reassurance-seeking.
Health anxiety
Health anxiety involves persistent fear of illness and cycles of body monitoring, checking, reassurance-seeking, and research. It often overlaps with physical anxiety symptoms and pages such as Can anxiety feel like a heart attack?.
Phobias
Phobias involve intense fear of specific objects, situations, or exposures. The pattern is often organized around a circumscribed trigger and reinforced by avoidance.
Trauma-related anxiety patterns
Trauma-related anxiety may involve hypervigilance, startle, avoidance, body memory, and persistent threat sensitivity. See Trauma and anxiety and Hypervigilance and anxiety.
Common symptoms across disorders
Anxiety disorders can share symptoms such as worry, fear, avoidance, physiological activation, sleep disruption, irritability, and concentration difficulty. Physical symptoms commonly include racing heart, dizziness, nausea, shortness of breath, tingling, chest pain, and fatigue (National Institute of Mental Health, 2024; World Health Organization, 2023).
For a symptom-first map, start with
Anxiety symptoms.
If your experience feels strongly physical, see
Why anxiety feels physical,
Nervous system and anxiety, and
Body-first vs mind-first anxiety.
Symptom-specific pages include
nausea and anxiety,
fatigue and anxiety,
brain fog and anxiety,
tingling and anxiety, and
DPDR and anxiety.
How anxiety is maintained
Across disorders, anxiety is often maintained by reinforcing loops: threat prediction, body monitoring, avoidance, reassurance-seeking, and repeated attempts to gain certainty. The exact combination differs by condition. For example, GAD may lean more heavily on uncertainty and overthinking, panic may center on fear of bodily sensations, and health anxiety may involve checking and interpretation of physical symptoms.
Related concept pages include
anxiety and uncertainty,
avoidance and anxiety,
catastrophizing and anxiety,
overthinking and anxiety, and
intolerance of uncertainty.
Treatment overview
Evidence-based treatment for anxiety disorders often includes psychotherapy, especially CBT and exposure-based approaches, along with work on reducing avoidance, checking, reassurance cycles, and threat misinterpretation. For some people, medication is also part of treatment planning. Treatment selection depends on the disorder pattern, symptom severity, clinical history, and functional impact (American Psychiatric Association, 2022; National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance).
Start here:
Anxiety treatment.
If you are unsure whether symptoms have reached a level where formal support is needed, see
When to seek help for anxiety.
If you want a broader orientation before narrowing by diagnosis, return to the
Reference hub or
Start here.
Author
Gabrielle McMurphy, LCPC
Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor
Licensed in Idaho, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Montana
Founder, AnxietyExplained.com
Created: Jan 2026
Last reviewed: Mar 2026
Educational information only. This page does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. New or severe symptoms should be medically evaluated.
References
- American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR). 2022.
- National Institute of Mental Health. Anxiety Disorders. Reviewed 2024.
- World Health Organization. Anxiety disorders overview. 2023.
- National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Generalised anxiety disorder and panic disorder in adults: management.
- Barlow DH. Anxiety and Its Disorders.
- LeDoux J. Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety. 2015.
- Dugas MJ et al. Intolerance of uncertainty and generalized anxiety disorder research.
- Abramowitz JS, Braddock AE. Health anxiety and related fear-based checking patterns.
Purpose: Educational reference only.