Overcoming Anxiety Attack Symptoms

Anxiety symptoms are experienced by virtually everyone at times. It is a normal and natural feeling when facing situations which are unusual, challenging or risky.

We are all likely to encounter events in our lives which produce anxiety symptoms. These may be major such as the death of a close family member or severe financial problems. They can also be the more normal changes which are part of life: changes at work, home or in one’s social network. Even going on holiday or preparing for Christmas can involve a measure of anxiety.

A small amount of anxiety is healthy and useful if you are facing something difficult. It helps you to take better care of yourself in a dangerous situation and it can help you perform better, for instance in an exam or public performance.

Abnormal Anxiety is different. It can make you feel excessively afraid in situations that are not stressful or threatening to most people. It can give you such a high level of Anxiety (or nerves) before an event that it stops you thinking or acting in a constructive way.

Anxiety disorders are an extreme development of abnormal Anxiety. If you have an Anxiety disorder, then your anxiety will:

• be more intense than normal
• last longer than normal
• lead you to behave in ways that interfere with your normal life.

How Do Anxiety Disorders Develop?

There are various reasons why people develop Anxiety disorders but most sufferers, when they look back, can see that there was a period of stress in their lives that acted as a trigger. In addition, they may feel that they were always nervous, right from childhood, or always tended to worry about things.

Some stages in life seem to make us particularly vulnerable. Adolescence is an obvious one, but many young people seem to go through a difficult time a few years later, shortly after they first leave home. Perhaps life suddenly seems all too serious, with the need to be financially self-sufficient, to look for a partner, and generally establish yourself in the adult world.

But stressful events can strike any of us at any time, and if there are enough of them any one of us can be vulnerable to Anxiety. The Holmes-Rahe Scale was devised to measure stress levels. It is interesting to note that even a pleasurable event such as getting married causes a measurable stress, and could contribute to an Anxiety problem.