Excerpted from an article by Carmen Vaughan, LCSW

There are five major types of recognized anxiety disorders:

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD): This is characterized by chronic anxiety, exaggerated worry and tension and irritability, even when there is nothing to provoke it. It may be accompanied by physical symptoms such as fatigue, headaches, muscle tension, difficulty swallowing, twitching, trembling, sweating and hot flashes.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): This is characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and or repetitive behaviors (compulsions). The repetitive behaviors (such as hand-washing, counting, checking or cleaning) are often performed in the hope of preventing obsessive thoughts.

Panic Disorder: This is characterized by unexpected and repeated episodes of intense fear accompanied by physical symptoms that may include chest pain, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, sweaty palms, or abdominal distress.

Social Phobia (Social Anxiety Disorder): This is characterized by overwhelming anxiety and excessive self-consciousness in everyday social situations It can be limited to only one type of situation (such as speaking before others or eating in front of others ) or it can be so broad that symptoms appear whenever the individual is around other people. Persistent, intense fear of being watched and judged by others and being embarrassed or humiliated plague the sufferer. Physical symptoms such as blushing, sweating trembling and nausea by be present. 

Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD):  People with PTSD have persistent frightening thoughts and memories of their ordeal and feel emotionally numb. They may experience sleep problems, be easily startled, lose interest in things they used to enjoy, have trouble with relationships, and become irritable or aggressive. They avoid situations that remind them of the original incident.  PTSD sufferers usually repeatedly re-live the traumatic event in their thoughts or in nightmares when they sleep. Ordinary occurrences can trigger the thoughts, images, sounds, smells and feeling of the original trauma; this phenomenon is known as a “flashback”. Sometimes the individual can lose touch with reality while experiencing the flashback and believe that the actual traumatic incident is happening all over again. Most of these symptoms develop within three months of the traumatic event, but occasionally they do not emerge until years later.