Anxiety And Stress
Posts tagged Anxiety Attack
Where to find effective anxiety attack treatment
Apr 5th
I suffered for years with anxiety and panic attacks. I had no idea what they were at the time. I wrote it off as stress, bad diet, whatever worked at the time. Then there came a time when the attacks were so bad, so scary, so overwhelming that I had to do something. My friends and family were worried about me, and I finally had to admit that I was worried about me too.
I saw my Doctor and was informed that I had panic disorder and was suffering from acute anxiety attacks. Now anyone who has had this knows just how horrible it is. You feel as if everything is going to end. You are positive that you are going crazy. Nothing can keep your attention for more that thirty seconds. You have alphabetized everything you can get your hands on, and yet still you have all sorts of negative energy and nervous thoughts.
During an attact a few minutes feels like hours. By the end you are so exhausted that you sleep for hours. This can become so bad that it affects your way of life, your schooling, your work, anything. You begin to get so scared of having an attack that you avoid anything that you associate with prior attacks. You avoid anything that you think might trigger an attack. Your thinking becomes so irrational that you do not realize just how small a world you have made for yourself.
That is where the help comes in. The sooner the better. Especially with Panic Disorder, the sooner they diagnose it and begin treatment, the sooner you start to feel better, and the better your chances at a full recovery. It is at this point that you have to do what you feel comfortable with, but the best place to start is a family doctor, or if that is not possible find a non-profit organization that specializes in anxiety. You can even find 24 hour hotlines to call that can give you information. You have to decide how much of an active participant you want to be in getting better.
Finding treatment for anxiety and panic disorder is easy, being able to go, afford, and admit that something is wrong are the hard parts. I turned to my family doctor at first. He tried anti-depressants at a high dosage because they have a side effect of treating anxiety. This didn’t work for me however and he referred me to a therapist and a psychiatrist.
It took my psychiatrist all of an hour to realize that I had panic disorder and was borderline agoraphobic. He got me on a medication that acts as a sedative. For people with anxiety of any kind taking a medication is
Understanding anxiety and panic attacks
Feb 21st
What is Anxiety?
There is some confusion about what anxiety is and what if any the differences are between an anxiety attack and a panic attack. Having done much research on this topic I find that some use the words anxiety and panic interchangeably, while others describe the two as different.
Having personally experienced anxiety and panic attacks, I would have to agree with the latter.
Anxiety is defined as “A painful uneasiness of mind, usually over an anticipated ill. An abnormal apprehension and fear often accompanied by physiological signs such as sweating and increased pulse, by doubt about the nature and reality of the threat itself and self doubt.”
I can definitely relate to this definition. My fears and worries were usually based around things anticipated or that I thought I could not handle. When I was pregnant with my forth child and homeschooling 3 young children, I began to feel like I could not handle all of my responsibilities. It was really because of self-doubt and believing things that were not true. I worried incessantly that I would not be able to handle 3 young children, homeschooling, household responsibilities, and a newborn baby.
The physical symptoms are just as bad as the emotional symptoms, I think. I remember feeling like a creepy crawly feeling all over my body. That is such a horrible feeling. I felt trapped, trapped in my pregnancy, trapped at home, and trapped with the kids. I felt like there was a hand just a couple of inches from my face. I felt trapped in the winter, looking so dark and gloomy, it seemed like it would never end. I would go outside for air and it didn’t help. When I was driving I felt trapped and had to have the window open when it was so cold and it didn’t even help.
Everyone gets anxious. It is nervousness, being unsure or uncomfortable about something, or worrying about something. We are all human, and will at least occasionally worry and have fears. That is what anxiety is; it is worries or fears. It might be as simple as worrying about how you will get all of your bills paid, or worrying that your child will get sick, or worrying because you lost your job and you are worried that you won’t find a new one soon enough.
When one has an anxiety disorder or anxiety or panic attacks, your worries and fear are obsessive. You spend a lot of time worrying. You have many fears or the fears are intense. I am not going to get into the specific anxiety disorders , such as
Anxiety – What is an Anxiety Symptom?
Nov 20th
Am I having a heart attack? Am I dying? Or is it anxiety? Many symptoms of anxiety mirror symptoms of other illnesses. This is because the “fight or flight” response is triggered in anxiety attacks and the body will respond as if it is threatened. The heart will race; the breathing will become shallow, sweats will breakout over the body to keep it cool in preparation for flight, these are all signs of anxiety, or an anxiety attack. Attacking anxiety back and regaining control over your reflex responses will help reduce the number, frequency and severity of your anxiety symptoms.
When an Anxiety Symptoms is Harmful and When it Isn’t
There is a wide range of anxiety symptoms that may be no more than a mild feeling of uneasiness and as intense as extreme fear. In some cases, a little amount of anxiety is good and normal and it may even help to improve a person’s performance. There are features like having heart palpitations or a racing heart as well as a lot of sweating that point in the direction of being an anxiety symptom. Symptoms such as irritability and lack of concentration as well as having strange thoughts and having extreme mood changes are psychological symptoms.
Treating Anxiety Stress Symptoms
One may wonder as to what the causes of anxiety symptoms are and who the people at greatest risk are. The answer lies in the fact that anxiety symptoms are a result of anxiety disorders which may occur due to a change in the way amygdale, which is a small organ in the subconscious brain, reacts. This is also known as anxiety switch. For treatment to be effective, there is a need for concentrating directly on these symptoms and the treatment should be aimed at the root causes of any anxiety disorders, which in other words, is an inappropriate reaction of the amygdale.
It may be noted that everybody may have experienced anxiety symptoms at some point of time in their lives and most are able to effectively deal with such situations. When there is a lot of unusual rise in the adrenaline levels in the blood it sets off a chain reaction of normal but wrong reactions which results in powerful anxiety symptoms that greatly affect the person afflicted.
There are also instances of some people experiencing symptoms when there is no obvious cause and these are known as free-floating symptoms that can be discontinuous in nature or may continue over a longer period of time. Some even have situational anxiety wherein the anxiety symptoms can be correlated with particular situations.
One may also wonder whether anxiety symptoms are harmful and the answer is certainly not. They do not cause harm to the person even though they elicit a sense of horror and scare the person but in effect anxiety symptoms are not harmful, being exaggerations of normal body sensations and reactions. It bears repeating that to treat anxiety symptoms, one has to address the root cause, which lies in the amygdale, where anxiety is created and stored as well as sustained.