Why Do People Get Anxiety Attacks

When Should I Call The Doctor

Some panic attacks have signs that can be confused with a physical problem like a heart attack. If you have chest pain or trouble breathing or lose consciousness, seek emergency medical care.

You should call your healthcare provider if you have panic attacks and experience:

• Chronic anxiety that interferes with daily life.
• Difficulty concentrating.

How To Cope With An Anxiety Attack

Lets start with the immediate, quick hacks to help you freeze your anxiety attack once it kicks into your life. No matter how scared or helpless you feel at that moment, try to do the following things:

When you have an attack, your breath is too short and shallow, meaning it worsens further symptoms. Once you feel the panic stand up and start doing some simple stretching. If you manage to squeeze in a yawn, that will help you tame the attack even faster. Stretching and yawning instantly helps you relieve muscle tension and interrupt the vicious cycle that is just about to roll in full strength.

No need to master the art of meditation for this. Simply inhale for three counts and exhale for five. Repeat the exercise for as long as you need to.

To regulate your bodys temperature and reduce the escalating cycle of panic, slowly drink a glass of icy water. Take small sips and focus on every gulp you make. While drinking, imagine how your body and mind is cooling down.

To activate your parasympathetic nervous system, use this simple meditation technique: focus your gaze on an imaginary point in front of you relax your focus and use your peripheral vision, as if you are trying to take in everything around you with soft focus. It signals to your brain to relax. The more you practice this technique the faster it will help you to relax in any situation.

Anxiety And Sleep Research

There is, however, plenty of research on how anxiety can affect sleep and vice versa.

According to the ADAA, research shows that sleep disorders occur in almost all psychiatric disorders.

In a small 2015 study , researchers examined the relationship between cognitive behavioral therapy and sleep quality in people with anxiety. Researchers found that both sleep quality and sleep latency improved in participants who responded to CBT.

The researchers believe that targeting sleep problems during anxiety treatment might be beneficial for those who have trouble sleeping.

Its important to remember that it can take time to find the right treatment approach for your anxiety. Because of this, you and your doctor may choose to use a variety of different treatment options.

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What Is An Anxiety Attack

An anxiety attack is a short period of strong fear that happens for no reason that you know of. An anxiety attack is also known as a panic attack. An anxiety attack can be a one-time event, or can become an ongoing problem. If you have two or more anxiety attacks in a month, you may have a condition called panic or anxiety disorder. If anxiety attacks become severe , they may keep you from living a normal life.

Other Causes Of Anxiety Attack Symptoms

Hyperventilation is not the only cause of anxiety attack symptoms either. Anxiety and stress have a tendency to cause your body to experience very strange sensations – often sensations that differ from person to person. Some people may feel like they can’t lift their head, or that something is wrong with their brain – these are all issues that may be caused by anxiety stress.

In addition, anxiety has a tendency to cause the brain to focus on sensations that would otherwise be normal. This is the result of over-sensitization – your mind is so tuned in to your body that it notices very small sensations that someone without anxiety would otherwise ignore.

Finally, the fear of getting anxiety attack symptoms can also trigger the symptoms. It’s unclear why this occurs, but most likely it is psychosomatic in some way .

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Don’t Fight A Panic Attack

Fighting a panic attack can often make it worse. Trying to resist the attack and finding you’re unable to can increase your sense of anxiety and panic.

Instead, during a panic attack, reassure yourself by accepting that although it may seem embarrassing, and your symptoms may be difficult to deal with, the attack isn’t life-threatening. Focus on the fact that the attack will evetually end and try your best to let it pass.

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Does Alcohol Cause Anxiety

Whats the relationship between alcohol & anxiety? Drinking alcohol interferes with your brains neurotransmitters. Again, alcohol triggers a release of feel-good hormones in the brain after a couple of drinks. But by the time youre sobering up, these chemicals are gone.

This means that the levels of stress-relieving and pain-reducing hormones in your brain may be lower when you sober up than they were when you started drinking. And this can happen just hours after youve had a few drinks.

Doctors often attribute anxiety after drinking to withdrawal from alcohol. If you experience mild anxiety after having a few too many, it may be attributable to a much milder version of severe withdrawal. More intense versions of the same symptoms are commonplace for heavy drinkers and binge drinkers experiencing physical withdrawal from alcohol.

Whats more, many people use alcohol as a way to self-medicate mental health conditions, like social anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder , and depression.

And people with an alcohol use disorder are 2 3 times more likely to have anxiety. Unfortunately, using alcohol only worsens mental health issues in the long run.

To Learn To Cope With An Anxiety Attack Effectively First You Need To Understand What Exactly Happens With Your Body And Mind

In a nutshell an anxiety attack is an exaggeration of the arousal of your sympathetic nervous system.

Heres a more detailed explanation for this:

Your brain focuses on some alleged thread, for instance, a very scary thought that was floating somewhere at your subconscious. Your thalamus the part of the brain responsible for regulating consciousness, sleep and alertness transfers that information to your amygdala the part of the brain responsible for emotional reactions, decision-making and memory which marks it as danger and sends a signal to your sympathetic nervous system, activating the fight-or-flight response.

At the same time, your brain decides to shoot an extra dose of adrenaline inside your blood system, thus triggering the initial panic attack symptoms like rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, sweating and blood pressure rise.

All of the above are the normal sympathetic responses, in the case that you were facing some real danger. But as in reality theres no danger present, you start panicking as you fail to ascribe these symptoms to something particular and start believing things like you are having a heart attack/severe allergic reaction or actually dying.

This huge mix of fear and panic make other symptoms to kick in and voila a full-scale anxiety attack in action.

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Signs And Symptoms Of Anxiety Disorders

In addition to the primary symptom of excessive and irrational fear and worry, other common emotional symptoms include:

• Feelings of apprehension or dread.
• Watching for signs of danger.
• Anticipating the worst.
• Irritability.
• Feeling like your minds gone blank.

But anxiety is more than just a feeling. As a product of the bodys fight-or-flight response, it also involves a wide range of physical symptoms, including:

• Pounding heart.
• Shaking or trembling.
• Insomnia.

Because of these physical symptoms, anxiety sufferers often mistake their disorder for a medical illness. They may visit many doctors and make numerous trips to the hospital before their anxiety disorder is finally recognized.

Panic Disorder With Agoraphobia

Agoraphobia was traditionally thought to involve a fear of public places and open spaces. However, it is now believed that agoraphobia develops as a complication of panic attacks and panic disorder. Although it can develop at any point, agoraphobia usually appears within a year of your first recurrent panic attacks.

If youre agoraphobic, youre afraid of having a panic attack in a situation where escape would be difficult or embarrassing. You may also be afraid of having a panic attack where you wouldnt be able to get help. Because of these fears, you start avoiding more and more situations.

For example, you may begin to avoid:

• Crowded places such as shopping malls or sports arenas.
• Cars, airplanes, subways, and other forms of travel.
• Social gatherings, restaurants, or other situations where it would be embarrassing to have a panic attack.
• Physical exercise in case it triggers panic.
• Certain food or drinks that could provoke panic, such as alcohol, caffeine, sugar, or specific medications.
• Going anywhere without the company of someone who makes you feel safe. In more severe cases, you might only feel safe at home.

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How To Help Someone With Anxiety

All of us worry and get scared from time to time. But those with anxiety may feel consumed by fears of things that might seem irrational to others. It can be hard to relate to these concerns, and as a result, many people dont know how to best help someone with anxiety. People are often dismissive of people experiencing anxiety, says Joseph McGuire, Ph.D., a pediatric psychologist with Johns Hopkins Medicine. With other medical illnesses, you may be able to see physical symptoms. But with anxiety, you dont necessarily see what the person is dealing with. So its important to be sensitive to what the person with anxiety is going through, even if it doesnt make sense to you. Its distressing to watch a loved one experience panic attacks and face anxiety every day, but there are things you can do to help. It starts with recognizing the signs of excessive worry and understanding the best ways to support your loved one.

The Effective Habit: You Allow For And Tolerate Uncertainty The Anxiety Habit: Uncertainty Is Intolerable: You Must Make Sure Of Everything

In some way, almost all forms of anxiety stem from fear of uncertainty. People who have an anxiety problem are intolerant of uncertainty. They feel like they MUST know things and be in control of every situation. But this is never possiblelife always involves some uncertainty.

People who dont have an anxiety problem know this and accept it. When they are not sure what is going to happen, they dont go to excessive lengths to try and figure it out. They dont spend much time mentally analyzing situations or preparing and planning for every possible outcome.

They dont try to answer questions about the future that cant possibly be answered. Sure, everyone has to spend some time planning for the future, but they keep it to a minimum. Their attention is more focused on what is happening in the present moment instead of what might happen in the future.

When they are unsure about something, they allow themselves to move on with their day even if they cant resolve it. They let themselves not know things.

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Things People Suffering From Anxiety Do That Other People Dont Understand

Anxiety is one of the worst emotions a person can feel, or rather, suffer from. While everyone can get anxious or nervous at any point of time due to external or internal factors, some people are unable to deal with frequent anxiety attacks. Anxiety may affect a person in different ways panic attacks, some type of phobia, or social anxiety.

If you suffer from repeated worry, muscle tension, chronic indigestion, irrational fears, or panic, you may be suffering from anxiety. Here are 12 things that people with anxiety do which others around them would not understand until they understand the anxiety of the person.

The Effective Habit: You Put No Demands On Yourself To Feel Calm You Allow Yourself To Feel However You Feelthe Anxiety Habit: You Believe That You Shouldnt Feel Anxious So You Try To Fight It

People with an anxiety problem put demands on their feelings. They believe there is a right way and a wrong way to feel in any given situation. They might deem it ok to feel anxious before giving a speech in front of 100 people, but not ok to be sitting at work feeling panicky for seemingly no reason.

Well unfortunately, your mind does not care about should. You feel the way you feel. There is no should, your feelings just are what they are. Demanding that they be anything other than what they are is just going to drive you nuts, because feelings are something that happens to you, not something you choose.

People who do not have an anxiety problem accept this. They have no expectations that they should feel calm all the time. So when they dont feel calm, this is no big deal. And they dont treat it like its a big deal. They let themselves feel whatever they feel and move on with their day.

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Obsessing Over The Tiniest Details

Those suffering from an anxiety disorder tend to obsess over tiny details. They obsess about the smallest gestures, looks, or even a glance. The world around them makes them feel like something is not right or something is about to go very wrong and hence even the smallest of actions seem too much for them to handle.

The main reason behind such fear is that they have done something that is not right. This may lead them to constantly ask questions like whether they are okay, whether they have done something wrong or if things are fine. This is the point where you should reassure them that nothing is wrong.