Anxiety
Experience that is humanly possible
Once someone has developed pronounced fears (anxiety), these usually do not simply disappear again by themselves. This means that most anxiety disorders become chronic without treatment and often persist for years or decades.
In addition, they often occur together with other diseases, especially depression and abuse or dependence on alcohol, drugs or medication. As a result, many of those affected feel depressed and hopeless due to the ongoing anxieties and limitations in their everyday lives.
Others try to fight the fear of alcohol or drugs and need more and more of them over time. Somatoform disorders also occur relatively often together with anxiety disorders. Those affected suffer from a variety of recurrent and frequently changing physical symptoms.
Connection with a physical cause
Since anxiety is very often accompanied by physical changes such as racing heart, shortness of breath or sweating, it is also necessary to check whether a physical cause could be behind the symptoms.
For example, an overactive thyroid gland can cause someone to suffer from nervousness, irritability and increased anxiety.
Natural instincts
Nature equipped all higher living beings with natural instincts and with a rather similar, automatically running anti-stress program. It serves one purpose above all else: to maintain one’s own integrity.
Depending on the situation, either FIGHTING OR FLEEING is possible. Against an inferior or about equally strong opponent, a living being will generally choose to fight, against a superior opponent it will usually try to escape.
Related feelings
Anxiety and panic attacks have a long history of the development of the person concerned. Negative experiences, often from early childhood, weigh on them for years before the first panic attack breaks out.
Anxiety means a disturbance of the feeling and more often stand for suppressed and unlived feelings, such as anger, aggression, unfulfilled need for love – or also unlived wishes or life goals.
Pause… think
What if you can quit the anxiety and live the life you want?
If such suppressed and unlived feelings and impulses on the body are a permanent condition or if they are repeated more often, a high tension arises.
The nerves and organ processes get into disorder and can no longer interlock in a meaningful and biological way. The tension of the nervous system releases adrenaline.
If the nervous system is exposed to constant, long-lasting stress, the adrenaline level is not reduced to its normal level again. The excessive release of adrenaline is the main physical cause of panic attacks.
Panic attack
During a panic attack, the affected person loses control over his or her body. As if in a fast run, the heart races, breathing becomes faster.
The blood pressure rises, no clear thought can be grasped: FIGHT OR CURSE! The digestive system also gets out of control. In the worst case, the affected person is struck by feelings of fainting and fear of death.
Stress triggers
Another basis for anxiety disorders can be laid when children learn from their parents to attach great importance to other people’s opinions when they become perfectionists.
This makes them later susceptible to the fear of making mistakes, the fear of being exposed through mistakes. This makes them more vulnerable to developing social phobia.
Stressful life events or particularly negative experiences are then the triggers of the anxiety disorder, e.g. death of a family member, separation, career change, moving house.
Predisposition, learning experience, and life circumstances must, therefore, come together to trigger an anxiety disorder. Chronic suffering is then caused by “maintaining factors“, such as avoidance behaviour.
Causes
From animal research, it is known that an essential factor for the development of anxiety is the uncontrollability of one’s own life. In follow-up studies with humans, it has been found that the greater the feeling of uncontrollability and the more areas of life are affected, the greater the probability of developing fears requiring treatment. This feeling is described as follows: important areas of one’s own life cannot be influenced by the person himself, e.g. at work or in private life.
There are various theories causes of anxiety and panic attacks, but they are largely unexplored. Many scientists try to approach the respective problem, including the fears, exclusively with the help of the mind and often do not allow everything that cannot be understood and controlled by the mind.
It seems certain that the continuous further development of mankind with its numerous negative side effects represents an excessive demand for many.
The fact is that at the beginning of the 21st century, humans still react to stress as naturally as a primaeval man who encountered a wild animal and responded with his automatic anti-stress program: FIGHT OR FLY.
But there is also good news: with the help of suitable therapy methods, anxiety disorders can be brought under control in most cases. The prognosis is most favourable if the anxiety has not been present for too long. However, even anxieties that have been present for years can often be significantly reduced by therapy, so that the quality of life of those affected usually improves significantly.
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