How to tell if your anxiety may be sign of a more serious disorder

Panic and anxiety are crucial responses that the body has when faced with a potentially threatening situation.  These mechanisms have been fine tuned by evolution to provoke a series of responses throughout the body that alerts us to danger and engages the “fight or flight” reaction in our brain.  Almost instantly, the heart starts pounding, adrenaline is released into the bloodstream, and our attention is highly focused.  A certain level of panic and anxiety in social situations can help judge a person's intentions and if the person or the environment may be a threat.  In these ways, moderate levels of panic and anxiety have certain evolutionary benefits that exist within everyone. 

But how can you tell if, let’s say, the fear of social interaction, or the butterflies in the stomach while in a public place, are part of a more serious disorder and not just a natural reaction?  Much of the differentiation between a healthy level of panic and anxiety and a more harmful level lies in the concept of impairment.  Does the anxiety disturb the ability to complete relatively simple, everyday tasks?  Does the stress prevent the person from acting in a way that other people in the same situation would, and leading to avoidance of the situation?  If panic and anxiety prevents an individual from doing what he or she wants to do or go where he or she wants to go, this may be a sign of a disorder.

This is one of the easiest ways to distinguish between abnormal and normal anxiety, but a specific diagnosis relies on the judgment of a trained mental health professional – it is not as simple as a yes-or-no test of symptoms.  The mental health professional can diagnose a panic and anxiety disorder through examining the entirety of the patient's situation.