Generalized anxiety disorder is a problem that is mainly mental. A person with this condition gets repeated incidents of anxiety attack for no apparent reason for several months. This is a debilitating disorder because it disrupts their lives since they cannot function normally and perform their everyday tasks as required of them.

For instance, an office worker with generalized anxiety disorder will start to imagine all sorts of horrible scenarios that will make her ineffectual at work. Not only will she be unable to follow instructions, she will not even be able to concentrate. She is better off not going to work at all because she will end up disrupting the entire office with what would seem like antics to her office mates. It will also wreck her reputation and name with her immediate boss and fellow workers.

The symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder is varied and easily mistaken for other conditions and illnesses. This is why an expert in generalized anxiety disorder or and other form of disorder is needed to properly diagnose this condition. Such an expert would be a psychiatrist, psychologist, or an experienced behavioral therapist.

Some of the more common symptoms are inability to relax, concentrate, and cease from worrying. A person with generalized anxiety disorder will also suffer from insomnia and a tendency to be jumpy.

As far as physical signs, you should watch out for excessive sweating for no apparent reason, trembling and shaking, muscle tension, cramps, headaches, nausea difficulty in swallowing, irritability, fatigue, hot flashes, and frequent trips to the bathroom.

If you look at these physical symptoms, you will notice that these are common, everyday signs that anyone can experience – even on a daily basis. Stress can do that, and most adults and teenagers suffer from stress on a daily basis. So, what separates an ordinary stress attack from a generalized anxiety disorder?

First, you cannot isolate one symptom and declare it as a generalized anxiety disorder. For instance, having frequent headaches does not mean you have this condition. It probably means you suffer from migraine, have eye problems, or you are coming down with the flu.

Generalized anxiety disorder has to have at least three symptoms affecting the person at the same time.

Second, the anxiety attacks must be recurring frequently but unscheduled over a period of at least six months.

Third, a doctor must be the one, and the only one who can say for sure whether or not it is indeed generalized anxiety disorder. Self analysis and self diagnosis is never going to be accurate, especially for cases like these.

A doctor can effectively rule out other conditions like post traumatic stress syndrome, caffeine overload, substance abuse, or any other physical condition. Generally, this condition is very misleading, and unless a person comes forward complaining about unusual behavior, then that person could continue living her life without getting any treatment whatsoever. The sad part is that there are modern scientific methods that can be used to control these chronic anxiety attacks.