Overcoming Anxiety Attack Symptoms

Anxiety is defined by some as “a painful uneasiness of mind.” Anxiety to the psychiatrist is a symptom of some deeper problem. To anyone who has ever suffered with anxiety symptoms, no description is necessary.

To those who have not experienced anxiety in its unbound form, that is so-called free-floating anxiety, one can say that it is perhaps one of the most disconcerting symptoms suffered by humans.

The patient feels uneasy all the time, but may have periods when he becomes panic-stricken and feels as though he is about to die. He may have severe palpitation of the heart, tightness in his throat, shortness of breath, sweat profusely, etc. The general practitioner is frequently called to see such a patient and the family is quite certain that the patient is having a “heart attack” which is sure to be fatal. When the doctor administers a sedative drug, the patient quiets down and does not die at all, but lives on to suffer similar attacks until the source of the anxiety is sought, found and treated.

Anxiety does not always express itself as just described above. What I have just described is “free-floating” or generalized anxiety. Anxiety can be and often is displayed in a disguised form in symptoms quite unlike those of generalized anxiety. But before we tell of these other manifestations, let us look at the origin and causes of anxiety in a general way.

Anxiety may be generated by a threat from within the personality or, on the other hand, can be caused by some sort of external or environmental threat to the person.

In the first instance, repressed hostility or resentment which is subconscious but dangerously near open expression may be the cause of anxiety. In the second instance such threats as loss of love, loss of prestige or threat of danger are examples of exterior cause of anxiety.

Anxiety Symptoms of Different Kind.

Some people handle their anxiety in other ways than the direct expression of it. Instead of having panic spells, fear of impending doom, palpitation, etc., in other words generalized anxiety symptoms, they develop symptoms of quite another nature but which still are expressions of anxiety.

Let’s briefly run down through some of these other types of expression of anxiety.

1. Conversion reaction: Here, just as the name implies, the anxiety is converted and expressed in some bodily symptoms. One of the common conversation symptoms may be paralysis of an arm or leg when there is no organic cause. Such paralysis can be and often is an expression of anxiety. Blindness, deafness, convulsions, areas of bodily anesthesia, numbness and tingling of fingers and toes, all of these can be manifestations of anxiety.

2. Phobic reactions: Here we find the individual’s anxiety is replaced by a neurotic fear. This may be a fear of high places, open places, crowds, germs, dirt etc. In this manner the individual can avoid the object of his phobia and thus avoid his anxiety. Unless one realizes that this abnormal fear which the person has, sometimes for an object which no one else fears, is actually only a substitute reaction so that he avoids anxiety, it is difficult to understand these phobias.

3. Introjection: By this mechanism the individual actually turns his anxiety inward towards himself. He becomes, therefore, self-depreciatory and self-accusatory which leads to his becoming depressed. Here then is anxiety actually being expressed by the symptom of depression.

Become Hypochondriacal.

There are several other ways in which patients handle anxiety differently. Some become hypochondriacal – which is a big word simply to say that they worry over the function of their organs when there is really nothing organically wrong with them.

This bodily preoccupation is merely a substitute for the feeling of anxiety. The anxiety now, instead of being generalized, is focused about the particular organ suspected of being diseased.

The treatment of anxiety itself or any of the other symptoms substituted for it by the patient consists of working with the patient to discover the causes of the anxiety. After these are faced and understood, the patient can usually work things out in a satisfactory way and rid himself of the symptoms. Much of the time of the psychiatrist is spent with anxious patients in just this working-out procedure.