Anxiety, fear and panic
by Admin
Posted on 15-12-2022 01:44 PM
There are many different causes of anxiety, fear or panic and it's different for everyone. When you're feeling anxious or scared, your body releases stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. This can be helpful in some situations, but it might also cause physical symptoms such as an increased heart rate and increased sweating.
In some people, it might cause a panic attack. Regular anxiety, fear or panic can also be the main symptom of several health conditions. Do not self-diagnose – speak to a gp if you're worried about how you're feeling.
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Anxiety can affect both your body and mind. The effect on your mind can include: a feeling of dread or fearing the worst feeling on edge or panicky difficulty concentrating feeling detached from yourself or the world around you physical feelings can include: anxiety can also affect your behaviour. You may withdraw from friends and family, feel unable to go to work, or avoid certain places. While avoiding situations can give you short-term relief, the anxiety often returns the next time you’re in the situation. Avoiding it only reinforces the feeling of danger and never gives you a chance to find out whether your fears are true or not.
Things you can try to help with anxiety, fear and panic
A standard way of treating anxiety is psychological counseling. This can include cognitive-behavioral therapy ( cbt ), psychotherapy, or a combination of therapies. This type of psychotherapy aims to recognize and change harmful thought patterns that form the foundation of anxious and troublesome feelings. In the process, practitioners of cbt hope to limit distorted thinking and change the way people react to objects or situations that trigger anxiety. For example, a psychotherapist providing cbt for panic disorder will try to reinforce the fact that panic attacks are not really heart attacks. Exposure to fears and triggers can be a part of cbt.
If you have panic disorder, you get sudden intense periods of fear. These episodes are called panic attacks. Not everyone who gets panic attacks has panic disorder. If you have panic disorder, you also have a constant fear of having more panic attacks. Everyone experiences a panic attack differently. A panic attack can cause both physical and mental symptoms. During a panic attack, you get intense feelings of anxiety. You may also feel like you’re choking or find it hard to swallow or feel detached from reality. For more information, see our section: how does anxiety feel? sometimes these symptoms can be so intense that you think you’re having a heart attack.
Phobias are an intense fear of certain situations or objects. Some of these fears may make sense, such as a fear of snakes. But often, the level of fear doesn’t match the situation. Like with other anxiety disorders, you may spend a lot of time trying to avoid situations that may trigger the phobia. A specific phobia, or a simple phobia, is an intense fear of a particular object or situation. It may cause you to avoid everyday situations. Some specific phobias include fear of: animals, such as spiders, dogs or snakes. Blood. Places outside your house. Public transportation. In severe situations, a person with agoraphobia may not leave the house at all.
Where to get NHS help for anxiety, fear and panic
If your symptoms meet a set of criteria, you may be diagnosed with a specific type of anxiety: generalised anxiety (ga) – having lots of worries about lots of things social anxiety – fear about looking foolish in a social situation health anxiety – anxiety related to fears about having a physical illness separation anxiety – fear of being away from loved ones or your home phobias – anxiety triggered by a fear of something specific agoraphobia – fear of being in situations that could cause a panic attack panic disorder – having frequent panic attacks post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) – reliving a distressing event and experiencing the same anxiety as during the original event.
Because of evolution, we’re wired to respond to fear by either fight, flight, or freeze. For different people, one of these responses will typically dominate. For instance, my spouse tends to freeze and will bury her head in the sand rather than deal with things that make her feel stressed and panicky. I tend more toward fighting, and will become irritable, excessively perfectionistic, or dogmatic if i feel stressed. When you understand that anxiety is designed to put us into a mode of threat sensitivity, it’s easier to understand someone who is feeling scared (or stressed) and acting out by being irritable or defensive, and to find compassion for them.
There are several approaches you can take on your own to reduce the fears and negative expectations that cause you to have panic attacks. The most effective thing you can do is something is desensitize yourself to the things you are afraid of through gradual step by step exposure to those triggers, but there are other things as well. Here’s a list of things that you can do. Learn about anxiety and panic attacks study the basic science of anxiety and panic attacks. It will help you get some perspective on your anxiety/panic attacks and reduce your fear of them.
Everyone feels anxious from time to time. It is caused by the fear or thought that something bad is about to happen. When a person feels anxious they may also have physical changes, such as higher blood pressure, heart rate and sweating. For most people feeling anxious will pass quickly when they no longer sense any danger. However, a person with anxiety can find it very difficult to stop thinking and feeling that something bad is about to happen. Anxiety is the main symptom of a number of mental health conditions. These include generalised anxiety disorder (gad), panic attacks and phobias.
Anxiety can become a problem when: there isn’t a clear reason for it it disrupts a young person’s life at home or school on a regular basis the problem has gone but the feeling of fear or panic has not it interferes with their ability to take part in activities they struggle to complete tasks that other children or young people do easily their fear or worry seems out of proportion to the problem they become anxious or fearful more easily, or more often, or more intensely than other children or young people it leads to unhelpful and unrealistic thoughts about themselves and others.
A panic attack is a sudden feeling of extreme anxiety or intense fear without a clear cause or when there is no danger. Panic attacks are common. They sometimes occur in otherwise healthy people. Panic attacks usually last only a few minutes, but an attack may last longer. And for some people, the anxiety can get worse quickly during the attack. Symptoms include feelings of dying or losing control of yourself, rapid breathing ( hyperventilation ), numbness or tingling of the hands or lips, and a racing heart. You may feel dizzy, sweaty, or shaky. Other symptoms include trouble breathing, chest pain or tightness, and an irregular heartbeat.