Causes Of Anxiety

The small and obvious answer: panic attacks are caused by high nervousness. But, what exactly is nervousness? Understanding how nervousness crops up will help you defeat panic attacks.

One of the largest myths surrounding nervousness is that it is harmful and can lead to a number of various life-threatening conditions.

Definition of Nervousness

Nervousness is defined as a state of apprehension or dread resulting from the anticipation of a real or imagined threat, event, or circumstances. It is one of the most common human emotions experienced person by people at some point in their lives.

But, most people who have never experienced person a panic attack, or extreme nervousness, fail to realize the terrifying nature of the experience. Extreme dizziness, blurred vision, tingling and feelings of breathlessness—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

When these sensations occur and people do not know why, they feel they have contracted an illness, or a serious mental shape up. The threat of losing complete control seems very real and genuinely very terrifying.

Fight/Flight Rejoinder: One of the root causes of panic attacks?

I am sure most of you have heard of the fight/flight rejoinder as an description for one of the root causes of panic attacks. Have you made the connection between this rejoinder and the unusual sensations you experience during and after a panic attack episode?

Nervousness is a rejoinder to a danger or threat. It is so named since all of its effects are aimed toward either fighting or fleeing from the danger. Thus, the sole purpose of nervousness is to care for the individual from harm. This may seem ironic given that you no doubt feel your nervousness is really causing you fantastic harm…I don't know the most noteworthy of all the causes of panic attacks.

But, the nervousness that the fight/flight rejoinder produced was vital in the daily survival of our very ancient ancestors—when faced with some danger, an involuntary rejoinder would take over that propelled them to take immediate action such as attack or run. Even in today’s hectic world, this is still a necessary means. It comes in useful when you must answer to a real threat within a split second.

Nervousness is a built-in means to care for us from danger. Fascinatingly, it is a means that protects but does not harm—an vital point that will be elaborated upon later.

The Physical Manifestations of a Panic Attack: Other pieces of the puzzle to know the causes of panic attacks. Nervousness and Compound Effects…

When confronted with danger, the brain sends signals to a part of the worried system. It is this system that is responsible for gearing the body up for action and also calms the body down and restores equilibrium. To carry out these two vital functions, the autonomic worried system has two subsections, the sympathetic worried system and the parasympathetic worried system.

Although I don’t want to become too “methodical,” having a basic understanding of the sympathetic and parasympathetic worried system will help you know the causes of panic attacks.

The sympathetic worried system is the one we tend to know all too much about since it primes our body for action, readies us for the “fight or flight” rejoinder, while the parasympathetic worried system is the one we like dearly as it serves as our restoring system, which returns the body to its normal state.

When either of these systems is activated, they stimulate the whole body, which has an “all or nothing” effect. This clarifies why when a panic attack occurs, the individual often feels a number of uncommon sensations right through the body.

The sympathetic system is responsible for releasing the adrenaline from the adrenal glands on the kidneys. These are small glands located just above the kidneys. Less known, but, is that the adrenal glands also release adrenaline, which functions as the body’s compound messengers to keep the try going. When a panic attack starts, it does not switch off as easily as it is turned on. There is always a period of what would seem augmented or continued nervousness, as these messengers travel right through the body. Reckon of them as one of the physiological causes of panic attacks, if you will.

After a period of time, the parasympathetic worried system gets called into action. Its role is to return the body to normal functioning once the perceived danger is gone. The parasympathetic system is the system we all know and like, since it returns us to a cool relaxed state.

When we engage in a coping strategy that we have learned, for example, a repose technique, we are in fact keen the parasympathetic worried system into action. A excellent thing to dredge up is that this system will be brought into action at some stage whether we will it or not. The body cannot continue in an ever-rising spiral of nervousness. It reaches a point where it simply must kick in, relaxing the body. This is one of the many built-in protection systems our bodies have for survival.

You can do your best with nerve-racking thoughts, maintenance the sympathetic worried system going, but eventually it stops. In time, it becomes a small smarter than us, and realizes that there really is no danger. Our bodies are incredibly intelligent—modern science is always learning incredible patterns of acumen that run right through the cells of our body. Our body seems to have infinite ways of production with the most complicated array of functions we take for granted. Rest assured that your body’s primary goal is to keep you alive and well.

Not so won over?

Try holding your breath for as long as you can. No matter how strong your mental will is, it can never override the will of the body. This is excellent news—no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that you are gong to die from a panic attack, you won’t. Your body will override that dread and search for a state of balance. There has never been a reported thing of a name dying from a panic attack.

Dredge up this next time you have a panic attack; he causes of panic attacks cannot do you any physical harm. Your mind may make the sensations continue longer than the body proposed, but eventually everything will return to a state of balance. In fact, balance (homeostasis) is what our body continually strives for.

The interference for your body is nothing more than the sensations of doing rigorous exercise. Our body is not alarmed by these symptoms. Why should it be? It knows its own capability. It’s our thinking minds that panic, which overreact and scream in sheer terror! We tend to dread the worst and exaggerate our own sensations. A quickened heart beat becomes a heart attack. An overactive mind seems like a close shave with schizophrenia. Is it our fault? Not really—we are simply diagnosing from poor information.

Cardiovascular Effects Try in the sympathetic worried system increases our heartbeat rate, speeds up the blood flow right through the body, ensures all areas are well supplied with oxygen and that waste products are removed. This happens in order to prime the body for action.

A fascinating feature of the “fight or flight” means is that blood (which is channelled from areas where it is currently not needed by a tapering of the blood vessels) is brought to areas where it is urgently needed.

For example, should there be a physical attack, blood drains from the skin, fingers, and toes so that less blood is lost, and is went to “active areas” such as the thighs and biceps to help the body arrange for action.

This is why many feel numbness and tingling during a panic attack-often misinterpreted as some serious health risk-such as the precursor to a heart attack. Fascinatingly, most people who suffer from nervousness often feel they have heart harms. If you are really worried that such is the case with your circumstances, visit your doctor and have it tartan out. At least then you can place your mind at rest.

Respiratory Effects

One of the scariest effects of a panic attack is the dread of overpowering or smothering. It is very common during a panic attack to feel stiffness in the chest and throat. I’m sure everyone can relate to some dread of losing control of your breathing. From personal experience, nervousness grows from the dread that your breathing itself would stop and you would be unable to renovate your health. Can a panic attack stop our breathing? No.

A panic attack is linked with an increase in the speed and depth of breathing. This has obvious importance for the defense of the body since the tissues need to get more oxygen to arrange for action. The feelings produced by this increase in breathing, but, can contain breathlessness, hyperventilation, sensations of choking or smothering, and even pains or stiffness in the chest. The real problem is that these sensations are alien to us, and they feel unnatural.

Having experienced person extreme panic attacks myself, I dredge up that on many occasions, I would have this feeling that I couldn’t trust my body to do the breathing for me, so I would have to manually take over and tell myself when to breathe in and when to breathe out. Of course, this didn’t suit my body’s condition of oxygen and so the sensations would intensify—along with the nervousness. It was only when I employed the technique I will describe for you later, did I let the body continue doing what it does best—running the whole show.

Importantly, a side-effect of augmented breathing, (especially if no actual try occurs) is that the blood supply to the head is really decreased. While such a decrease is only a small amount and is not at all perilous, it produces a variety of unpleasant but undisruptive symptoms that contain dizziness, blurred vision, confusion, sense of unreality, and hot flushes.

Other Physical Effects of Panic Attacks:

Now that we’ve discussed some of the primary physiological causes of panic attacks, there are a number of other effects that are produced by the activation of the sympathetic worried system, none of which are in any way harmful.

For example, the pupils widen to let in more light, which may result in blurred vision, or “seeing” stars, etc. There is a decrease in salivation, resulting in dry mouth. There is decreased try in the digestive system, which often produces nausea, a heavy feeling in the stomach, and even constipation. Finally, many of the muscle groups tense up in schooling for “fight or flight” and this results in subjective feelings of tension, sometimes extending to actual aches and pains, as well as trembling and shaking.

By and large, the fight/flight rejoinder results in a general activation of the whole bodily metabolism. Thus, one often feels hot and flushed and, since this process takes a lot of energy, the person generally feels tired and drained.

Mental Manifestations: Are the causes of panic attacks all in my head? is a inquiry many people wonder to themselves.

The goal of the fight/flight rejoinder is making the individual aware of the the makings danger that may be present. Therefore, when activated, the mental priority is placed upon searching the surroundings for the makings threats. In this state one is highly-strung, so to speak. It is very hard to concentrate on any one try, as the mind has been trained to seek all the makings threats and not to give up until the threat has been identified. As soon as the panic hits, many people look for the quick and simplest exit from their contemporary surroundings, such as by simply leaving the bank queue and on foot outside. Sometimes the nervousness can heighten, if we perceive that leaving will cause some sort of social embarrassment.

If you have a panic attack while at the workplace but feel you must press on with whatever task it is you are doing, it is quite understandable that you would find it very hard to concentrate. It is quite common to become disconcerted and generally restless in such a circumstances. Many those I have worked with who have suffered from panic attacks over the years indicated that reproduction light—such as that which comes from pad monitors and televisions screens—can can be one of the causes of panic attacks by triggering them or worsen a panic attack, above all if the person is feeling tired or run down.

This is worth impact in mind if you work for long periods of time on a pad. Fixed break reminders should be set up on your pad to remind you to get up from the desk and get some fresh air when possible.

In other situations, when during a panic attack an outside threat cannot normally be found, the mind turns here and starts to contemplate the possible illness the body or mind could be suffering from. This ranges from thinking it might have been a touch you ate at lunch, to the likelihood of an oncoming cardiac arrest.

The burning inquiry is: Why is the fight/flight rejoinder activated during a panic attack even when there is apparently nothing to be frightened of?

Upon closer examination of the causes of panic attacks, it would appear that what we are worried of are the sensations themselves—we are worried of the body losing control. These unexpected physical symptoms make the dread or panic that a touch is very incorrect. Why do you experience the physical symptoms of the fight/flight rejoinder if you are not frightened to start with? There are many ways these symptoms can manifest themselves, not just through dread.

For example, it may be that you have become generally stressed for some reason in your life, and this stress results in an increase in the production of adrenaline and other chemicals, which from time to time, would yield symptoms….and which you perceive as the causes of panic attacks.

This augmented adrenaline can be maintained chemically in the body, even after the stress has long gone. Another likelihood is diet, which directly affects our level of stress. Excess caffeine, alcohol, or sugar is known for causing stress in the body, and is believed to be one of the contributing factors of the causes of panic attacks (Chapter 5 gives a full conversation on diet and its importance).

In doubt emotions are often pointed to as possible trigger of panic attacks, but it is vital to point out that eliminating panic attacks from your life does not necessarily mean analyzing your psyche and digging into your subconscious. The “One Go” technique will teach you to deal with the present moment and defuse the attack along with removing the underlying nervousness that sparks the early nervousness.

Learn more

http://www.panicportal.com

Joe Barry is an international panic disorder coach. His informative site on all issues correlated to panic and nervousness attacks can be found here:http://www.panicportal.com