What Do Anxiety Attacks Feel Like?
Saturday, June 27th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
Believe it or not, over 20 million individuals in America alone suffer from panic attacks, but many more are living with this condition and aren’t even aware of it. In fact, panic attacks are one of the most commonly mis-diagnosed health problems within healthcare.
how can I tell if I’m having an anxiety attack? This article will discuss the most common signs and symptoms of panic attacks, how to know the difference between this condition and other health problems that mimic it, as well as the most effective therapies for panic attacks.
Before we talk about what a panic attack feels like, though, we first need to briefly talk about what happens with this condition so the symptoms and treatments make sense.
Within healthcare, a panic attack is actually classified as a mental condition. But this is actually not completely the case, because this condition is actually more of a problem with the nervous system than it is psychological.
Stress is the most common trigger, but panic attacks actually occur due to how the individual’s nervous system reacts to that stress.
Basically, a person who deals with panic attacks experiences a much more intense reaction to what would make most of us nervous. In order to understand this, we need to first have an understanding of the parts of the nervous system that are involved when we experience stress.
They are called the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS). Instead of making this boring like a text book, let me tell you a story to explain how this works.
Let’s say that a bear walks into the room as you’re reading this article. Your brain will perceive the bear as stress, because it threatens your life (and I don’t know about you, but I’m a little on the chubby side, so I’d make a pretty good meal for that bear).
Your brain is hard-wired to survive, so at this moment, it has to make a decision – do you run from the bear or fight it? Either way, the body needs to be prepared for this extra activity, so your brain will turn on the Sympathetic Nervous System.
This part of your nervous system prepares your body to either fight or flee – so your blood pressure raises (you need lots of oxygen to the muscles so they can help you run fast or fight), your heart beats faster, you breathe more deeply, and many other things.
Once the bear is gone, the brain turns on the other part of the nervous system that I mentioned (the Parasympathetic Nervous System), which does the opposite – it calms you down.
When a person suffers with panic attacks, this reaction is intensified – so, their may only be 1 bear in the room, but your brain thinks there’s actually 5 bears. This is where the problem happens.
So, with that said, how can I tell if I’m having an anxiety attack? Well, the signs and symptoms of panic attacks are different for each individual, and they can be experienced to different degrees.
Some individuals will have very minor panic attacks, so may not even realize what is occurring. Others have full-blown, very intense attacks that make them feel like they may be dying.
Click here (how can I tell if I’m having an anxiety attack) to continue reading this article, where you’ll learn the most common signs and symptoms of panic attacks, as well as the most effective treatments available for relief from this health condition.
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