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Understanding Anxiety Attacks
Anxiety disorder wasn’t even all that common a diagnosis just 20 years ago. Only recently has this set of symptoms been recognized as its own disorder, separate from other disorders.
It could yet prove true that some other disorders have been misdiagnosed, and are actually anxiety attacks. For instance, ADHD, the learning disability. If your whole system is frozen with panic, it stands to reason that you’d have a hard time learning.
The thing to remember about anxiety disorder is that there are physical symptoms of anxiety attacks. The sufferer isn’t just experiencing fear; they may have any or all of sweating, shortness of breath, chest pain, vertigo, nausea, difficulty breathing, and sensations such as hot or cold flashes, or tingling. Some sufferers have reported ringing in the ears, loss of bladder control, and even strange sensations such as falling through water or feeling like your hair is too heavy. Many sufferers have actually believed they were having a heart attack.
No kidding! Anxiety attacks are more like a form of seizure. It is down-playing it to call it mere anxiety, it’s actually a state of terror which suddenly grips you for no reason and doesn’t pass for several minutes. Sufferers come through the episode with an irrational fear of the circumstances around them or events just before the attack hit, even when they actually had nothing to do with the attack. With no idea how to stop anxiety attacks, the person will develop an unusual avoidance of perfectly ordinary objects or situations, like using a parking meter or doing laundry. It is typical for anxiety sufferers to develop extremely quirky behavior over the years, as cumulative avoidance of all kinds of imagined “triggers” mount.
Anxiety or panic attacks are caused by the sympathetic nervous system. Normally this is part of nature’s survival mechanism - the so-called “fight or flight” reflex. It’s nature’s way of putting your system in over-ride to avoid danger. But with anxiety disorder, that switch gets tripped in the brain for no reason at all, at apparently random times. Sometimes many times per day, for weeks at a time.
If left untreated for years, extended anxiety attacks can lead to agoraphobia, known as “the fear of the outside”. Agoraphobia, in its most extreme case, will actually cause people to stay in their home all the time, since the repeated anxiety attacks have hit them in so many situations that they now literally fear the whole world.
The good news is that anxiety and panic disorder are very easy to treat. Medications used as anti-depressants work extremely well to neutralize panic attacks, and in combination with regular psychological counseling, the disorder is 100% manageable.
It has been noted that anxiety disorder is inherited genetically, as it tends to run in families. Women are twice as likely as men to have it. Estimates peg the percentage as 2% of the population have anxiety and panic disorder. The symptoms typically do not hit until early adulthood, between the ages of 20 and 30.
Lesser cases of anxiety disorder are treatable without medication. In this case, the patient is put through therapy and psychiatric counseling, learning to deal with the attacks in a way that they can “ride them out” and not have too much of an impact on their lives.
However, with no treatment, severe anxiety and panic disorder can endanger a person by causing them to “freeze up” at critical moments such as driving a car. It can severely impact their social lives, as they withdraw from the world that they think is scaring them. And continued panic attacks can lead to an increased risk of heart attack or stroke, as the body is severely stressed by the repeated attacks.
As always, if you think you or someone close to you is suffering from anxiety disorder or panic attacks, you need to consult with a medical professional. Reading an article on a web page is no substitute for consulting with a psychiatrist.
Copyright Anxiety Depression
Tag: Understanding anxiety attacks
