Can anxiety be primarly psycholgical, with no physical component?

[worrier]

I'm trying to identify just where my personal experience lies in the spectrum of anxiety related disorders.  I would classify myself has suffering from something like GAD and have for ages.  I'm in my late 40's and can remember feeling like this all the way back through childhood.  My predominant symptom, from my personal perspective, is obsessive, frequently uncontrollable, worrying, primarily about social and financial matters.

I've seen psychologists and psychiatrists in the past about this and was recently told quite bluntly that I didn't suffer from an anxiety disorder because I don't experience any sort of physical symptoms, like racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, panic attacks, etc.  On the other hand, my obsessive worrying has twice landed me in the hospital for treatment of depression.

Is this at all common?  Physical or not, what I go through on a pretty regular basis can feel like living hell.  I'm constantly on edge, over-analyzing my own behavior and others' in an effort to head off some perceived unpleasantness, usually to be caused (or so it seems) by me.  On a number of occasions, this hyper-vigilance has gone on nearly continuously for months at a time and is emotionally exhausting, both to myself, and those closest to me.

I attribute the present lack of physical symptoms to desensitization over time without a corresponding resolution of underlying psychological issues.

Am I right in identifying my experience as GAD, or does it fall into some other category.  Writing it out like this, it also seems to have some aspects of OCD, again without an outward physical manifestation.

[gloomy]

As far as I know OCD can manifest just as intrusive unwanted disturbing thoughts that are uncontrollable without the physical signs.

[jerryilliniwek]

Hi Worrier,,

 

An interesting note.  Sorry you are having a tough time.  I'm in my late 40's, but have a more typical GAD experience.  Like I guess everyone on the forum, I'm no doctor.  Your anxiety that you describe sounds a lot like what of know of social phobia or social anxiety.  Since I've seen on this board a wide variety of symptoms, it is not hard for me to believe that a person may not have any physiological symptoms.  There seems to be a broad spectrum of possibilities among depression, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders.  I'd be interested if you have tried medications and therapy that typically target anxiety.  If so, have these helped? 

Regards,
JerryIlliniwek

[MistaVega]

 I did have physical symptoms of anxiety, but as my understanding grew, the less anxiety I felt. Nowdays I have zero anxious feelings; however, from time-to-time I find myself worrying about irrational things on a obsessive level and I know exactly how you feel. There was times I would just hurl myself to the floor feeling: angry, tired, scared, frustrated, depressed, lost, confused and just wish these thoughts could go away, then I would just feel like dien.

However I'm alot better now. I've developed my own coping method and it's working pretty well for me. So far, I'm in week two being worry free.