Sunday, August 19, 2007

Anxiety - What is an Anxiety Symptom?

Am I having a heart attack? Am I dying? Or is it anxiety? Many symptoms of anxiety mirror symptoms of other illnesses. This is because the “fight or flight” response is triggered in anxiety attacks and the body will respond as if it is threatened. The heart will race; the breathing will become shallow, sweats will breakout over the body to keep it cool in preparation for flight, these are all signs of anxiety, or an anxiety attack. Attacking anxiety back and regaining control over your reflex responses will help reduce the number, frequency and severity of your anxiety symptoms.When an Anxiety Symptoms is Harmful and When it Isn'tThere is a wide range of anxiety symptoms that may be no more than a mild feeling of uneasiness and as intense as extreme fear. In some cases, a little amount of anxiety is good and normal and it may even help to improve a person’s performance. There are features like having heart palpitations or a racing heart as well as a lot of sweating that point in the direction of being an anxiety symptom. Symptoms such as irritability and lack of concentration as well as having strange thoughts and having extreme mood changes are psychological symptoms.Treating Anxiety Stress SymptomsOne may wonder as to what the causes of anxiety symptoms are and who the people at greatest risk are. The answer lies in the fact that anxiety symptoms are a result of anxiety disorders which may occur due to a change in the way amygdale, which is a small organ in the subconscious brain, reacts. This is also known as anxiety switch. For treatment to be effective, there is a need for concentrating directly on these symptoms and the treatment should be aimed at the root causes of any anxiety disorders, which in other words, is an inappropriate reaction of the amygdale.It may be noted that everybody may have experienced anxiety symptoms at some point of time in their lives and most are able to effectively deal with such situations. When there is a lot of unusual rise in the adrenaline levels in the blood it sets off a chain reaction of normal but wrong reactions which results in powerful anxiety symptoms that greatly affect the person afflicted.There are also instances of some people experiencing symptoms when there is no obvious cause and these are known as free-floating symptoms that can be discontinuous in nature or may continue over a longer period of time. Some even have situational anxiety wherein the anxiety symptoms can be correlated with particular situations.One may also wonder whether anxiety symptoms are harmful and the answer is certainly not. They do not cause harm to the person even though they elicit a sense of horror and scare the person but in effect anxiety symptoms are not harmful, being exaggerations of normal body sensations and reactions. It bears repeating that to treat anxiety symptoms, one has to address the root cause, which lies in the amygdale, where anxiety is created and stored as well as sustained.

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