Causes Of Anxiety Disorders

Andrea meets the qualifications as experiencing illness anxiety disorder, which is when a “person is preoccupied with thoughts about having or getting a significant illness” when “in reality, person has no, or at most, mild somatic symptoms” (114). This causes the person to be highly anxious about being sick or even dying from a fatal disease for longer than six months, and displays unduly high number of health-related behaviors,” which can be disruptive to other aspects of their life. Some of these symptoms, which she all meets, include Andrea suddenly becoming gravely concerned or worried by emotionally provoking thoughts, such as her parents dying in a car crash, that will consequently ruin her ability to focus on other tasks throughout …show more content…
This also marked the beginning of when Andrea began to become hyperconcious and sensitive to the negativities in the world, especially ones that were related to health and her own health, specifically. Another potential cause to her behavior could have been that she lives a fairly “normal” and happy life that perhaps she may be looking for a reason to believe that her life is not as great as it really is, since she admitted that besides this disorder, she is “at peace” (118). It could also be that she has an extreme phobia of abandoning her beloved husband and baby if she were to die from disease, as she explains “their lives would be ruined” (125). This specific fear could have been caused by her friend’s dad’s death, where she watched her friend grieve over a lost loved one due to a medical condition. Another cause could be that her first husband used her for her money and showed her no care, love, or support, that most husbands are idealized as supposed to do. She admitted that she typically only dated men who were “interesting, offbeat, and unpredictable,” which can also describe her experience with illness anxiety disorder. A third factor could have been her period of “despondency” in which she seeked psychological services when changing her dating habits in hopes of seeking the “right” man. This is …show more content…
It is also described as “a response to obsessive concerns” such as Andrea’s obsessive concerns of being sick or suffering from a medical issue. The symptoms of this disorder include occurrence of repeated obsessions, which she experienced during different events including with the bone protrusion, her cough, numbness, and blurred vision. Another symptom is that the obsessions take up large amounts of time, which is also true because her anxieties are not cured until she is able to visit a doctor and gain his assurance, which often times, can take up to several visits. The last symptom is that this disorder is causing severe distress because it is disrupting her life so much that her own husband is considering separating from her because of the havoc it has caused their family. Also Andrea feels the effects of this disorder’s disruption because she finally seeks help on her own as she wants to feel at peace again with her happy life outside of this