Generalized Anxiety Disorder: What It Is and How to Recognize It

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) often goes unnoticed because the person experiences it not so much as frightening thoughts but as constant physical tension. Dr. Saulitis emphasizes that GAD is primarily a muscular and bodily phenomenon — not a cognitive one.

What Underlies the Disorder

In a healthy response, fear is a protective reaction to a real threat. Once the threat passes, the reaction should switch off. In GAD, this does not happen: the "all-clear button gets stuck." The trigger is gone, yet the stress hormones keep working, muscles stay tense, and the body remains on high alert. The organism spends a prolonged time in this state of over-tension, and that is what launches the vicious cycle of the disorder.

Why the "All-Clear Button" Gets Stuck

The doctor identifies several reasons:

• An overwhelmingly powerful trigger — something extraordinary (loss, catastrophe) that hits the brain "like a cannon blast." The affected centre becomes fixated and consciousness cannot escape that experience.
• An overly sensitive nervous system — like a car alarm set to go off at background noise. The brain codes even minor stimuli as danger and repeatedly triggers the anxiety response.
• Reduced brain processing capacity — due to immaturity, age-related decline, or toxic influences, the brain loses its ability to sort signals and can no longer switch the anxiety response off.

How It Manifests: What to Watch For

The defining feature of GAD is that anxiety lives at the muscular and bodily level, not only in thoughts. This sets it apart from other anxiety conditions. Characteristic signs include:

• constant muscle tension without an obvious cause
• a sense of threat "sitting somewhere inside" even when everything appears calm outwardly
• fear and tension that do not resolve — they ease slightly, then return at the faintest background stimulus
• disrupted sleep
• withdrawal and avoidance

Recognising GAD as a disorder of a stuck fear response — not a character flaw — is the first step toward seeking professional help.