Characteristics of Anxiety Levels
| Level | Characteristics |
|---|
| Mild | - Enhanced ability to deal with stressors
- Heightened awareness, problem-solving abilities; increased attention to details
- Curiosity increased, asks questions
- Alert, confident
- Logical thinking intact
|
| Moderate | - Hesitation and procrastination, blocking loss of train of thought
- Narrowing of perceptual field
- Change in voice pitch; speech rate accelerates
- Selective inattention
- Frequent change in topics
- Repetitive questioning, joking
- Increased respiratory rate, heart rate, muscle tension
- Dry mouth
- Palpitations
- Changing body positions frequently, restlessness
- Purposeless activity (wringing hands, pacing)
|
| Severe | - Highly distorted perceptual and cognitive function
- Focus on small or scattered detail, inability to see connections between events
- Selective inattention, inability to concentrate
- Fear of losing control
- Purposeless activity (pacing, wringing hands)
- Difficult and inappropriate verbalizations, inability to learn
- Sense of impending doom
- Sweating
- Hyperventilation, tachycardia, frequency and urgency
- Nausea, headache, dizziness
- Gross motor tremors, trembling, shaking
- Numbness or tingling sensations
- Dilated pupils
|
| Panic | - Dyspnea, choking feeling, chest pain
- Extreme discomfort, emotional pain
- Unrealistic, distorted perception of situation
- Disruption of visual field, distortion and enlargement of detail
- Inability to speak, unintelligible communication, incoherent speech
- Vomiting, incontinence
- Feeling of personality disintegration
- Fear of losing mind, fear of dying
|