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What Causes Anxiety?

trpurcell@gmail.com — 2010-02-09T17:14:32+11:00

Anxiety is a normal human response that allows you to cope with a stressful situation with actions like preparing for an exam or running away from danger. Anxiety, however, can become a problem when it is excessive, irrational and debilitating. When your it begins to affect the quality of your life, preventing you from engaging in daily activities, you may already have an anxiety disorder. The common types include generalised anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post traumatic stress disorder. Getting the right treatment for an anxiety disorder requires a clear understanding of a number of anxiety causes.

Genetics

Studies involving twins and families suggest that heredity plays a role in the development of anxiety disorders. A mental health professional will often examine your personal history to see if a particular one runs in your family.

Brain function

Changes in how the brain functions can also lead to anxiety disorder. Latest research suggests the role of parts of the brain such as the amygdala and hippocampus in storing and producing feelings of fear and anxiety. Hormonal imbalance in the brain may also be a possible cause for anxiety disorder. A new study mentioned in the website of the National Institute of Mental Health links excessive production of a hormone, orexin, in the brain circuit to panic attacks. When brain function is the possible cause of anxiety disorder, a combination of medication and psychotherapy may be prescribed for its treatment.

Environment

Stress arising from difficult situations is often the cause of anxiety disorder. Stress can stem from financial problems, relationship problems, work challenges, school problems and emotional trauma. In most cases of stress-related anxiety disorders, cognitive behavioural therapy works better than anti-depressants and anti-psychotic medication. Cognitive behavioural therapy teaches you techniques and skills for coping with stressful situations and triggers of anxiety. Stress reduction methods and relaxation techniques such as yoga, meditation and mindful breathing work to reduce the occurrence of episodes as well.

Other factors that increase the risk of developing anxiety disorder include illicit drug use, alcohol abuse, personality type, early childhood abuse, and chronic illness.

While the real cause of anxiety disorder is still unknown and may be the result of a combination of anxiety causes, this should not stop you from seeking immediate attention for it. Initially, your mental health professional will try to rule out any medical condition before considering other anxiety causes. As in most illnesses, including mental disorder, early attention improves your chances of effective treatment.

Anxiety Prevention Tips

trpurcell@gmail.com — 2010-02-12T17:06:06+11:00

Your body is naturally equipped with a defense mechanism that triggers anxiety, a fight or flight response when faced with threat or danger. Anxiety is a normal human reaction to challenges and difficult situations. It’s easy to feel anxious when you juggle responsibilities at home, at work, with your family and sometimes, with friends.

A little anxiety is alright, sometimes even beneficial, as it can teach you to plan and perform well as in the case of studying for an exam or practising for a performance onstage. Anxiety may become a problem when your worry or fear is disproportionate to the situation and prevents you from carrying on with your daily activities. Stop your worries from turning into an anxiety disorder by following self help anxiety prevention measures.

The following are some self help anxiety tips you can easily do at home:

Eat a well-balanced diet

Nutrition plays an important role in preventing and reducing symptoms of anxiety. While food may not cure an anxiety disorder, eating a balanced diet and avoiding or limiting certain foods can help you feel better and improve your mood. Avoid alcohol, caffeine and illicit drugs as these can aggravate symptoms of anxiety such as palpitations, difficulty in breathing and excessive perspiration. Studies link low serotonin levels and cases of anxiety and depression. Eating more complex carbohydrates such as whole wheat pasta, whole grains and cereals can increase serotonin levels in your brain. Other foods that have a relaxing effect because of tryptophan include milk, oats, bananas, soy products, poultry, nuts and sesame seeds.

Relax

When the body experiences stress, it produces stress hormones which cause the fight or flight response. Excessive amounts of the stress hormones can lead to high anxiety levels. While stress may be unavoidable in your job or at home, taking short time-outs of at least 20 minutes to relax can significantly reduce your overall anxiety.

Try relaxation techniques such as yoga, meditation and breathing exercises. These methods de-stress the mind by teaching you how to focus on a particular idea or action other than what could be causing you stress. Doing something pleasurable is a good anxiety-reducer as well. Make time for relaxation to break your anxiety-causing routine.

Exercise regularly

Studies show that exercising the body for at least 20 minutes at a time on most days in a week reduces symptoms of anxiety such as worry and depression. Exercise releases endorphins which are brain chemicals that produce feelings of happiness and well-being. Furthermore, exercise raises your body’s temperature which can have a calming effect.

Delegating small tasks, laughing, and interacting with positive people are other ways that also contribute to less anxiety. Life may not always go the way you want it but you can teach yourself to worry less with self help anxiety tips.

Have You The Right Anxiety Cure?

trpurcell@gmail.com — 2010-02-08T15:18:00+11:00

The demands and fast pace of a modern lifestyle can take a toll on your emotional health causing feelings of anxiety every now and then. Anxiety is a normal human emotion that everyone experiences in response to challenges or a stressful situation such as a problem at work, a difficult exam, or making an important decision. An anxiety cure becomes necessary when symptoms interfere with your daily activities and prevent you from leading a normal life.

Signs & Symptoms Of Anxiety

Choosing the right anxiety cure requires an analysis of its signs and symptoms and a determination of your type of disorder. Anxiety disorders include generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, phobias, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post traumatic stress disorder. Each disorder manifests different symptoms but share common signs such as excessive and irrational worry and fear of an otherwise harmless situation.

Other symptoms of anxiety are:

Difficulty in concentration
Insomnia
Restlessness
Fatigue
Muscle tension
Breathlessness
Nausea
Indigestion or stomach upset
Headaches
Excessive irritability

Self help and treatment

While medicines are available for treating symptoms of anxiety, drug treatment should be weighed against other therapies because they offer only temporary relief, may produce side effects and lead to dependency.

Cognitive behavioural therapy

Most cases of anxiety disorder have psychological and emotional factors which may be treated by psychotherapy. Cognitive behavioural therapy or CBT is safe and said to be effective in 75% of cases. It is based on the theory that inaccurate thoughts and beliefs, not other people or situations, lead to unhealthy moods and behaviour. A therapist will help you identify negative thinking patterns and view situations realistically to promote a different behaviour.

Exposure therapy

Considered as part of cognitive behavioural therapy, exposure therapy involves teaching you how to face the situations you fear in a gradual manner and in a safe and controlled environment. The aim of exposure therapy is to help you develop coping skills and the confidence to face anxiety-inducing situations.

Self help measures

Lifestyle changes

Anxiety levels may be aggravated by your current lifestyle such as overworking, an unhealthy diet, and excessive multi-tasking. Making changes which allow you to relax in between activities or which relieve you of your load can go a long way in reducing incidents of anxiety. Some people cope with stressful situations by taking short vacations, switching off their cellphones and focusing on relaxation during weekends.

Eating foods that are high in carbohydrates raise serotonin levels which have a calming effect. Other foods that can improve your mood include milk, bananas, soy, poultry, cheese and nuts.

Stress reduction techniques

Breathing exercises, meditation, yoga, stretching and massage are some of the techniques you can use to reduce stress whenever the need arises. These techniques produce a state of calm and can be learned from certified instructors or home videos.

Exercise

Exercise relieves symptoms of anxiety in a number of ways. When you exercise, brain chemicals called endorphins are released which produce a feeling of well-being and happiness. Exercise also raises the bodyís temperature which has a soothing effect. Other benefits of exercise include improved self esteem, confidence and higher energy levels.

Experiencing anxiety is not a reason for embarrassment. Everyone encounters overwhelm occasionally and may need professional help. Depending on your symptoms, a health professional can recommend the right anxiety cure for you.

Facing Your Fears

trpurcell@gmail.com — 2010-01-09T19:49:44+11:00

I think we've all read that facing our fears is one way to overcome anxiety. Well in on city in the USA it would seem they have taken just that approach.

There's a lot of talk about how to treat anxiety. This approach of confronting the thing that causes your anxiety in a safe way, to make you comfortable and familiar is one way professionals help you deal with your anxiety. There are many myths around anxiety and misinformation.

Misinformation does not only create vague pictures of a condition but will also likely cause people to believe things that do not actually exist. Among those conditions that typically receive serious amounts of myths are psychological and behavioral disorders, partly because psychological conditions are often hard to understand and seem mysterious. In this article, we would debunk the myths of one of the more common behavioral conditions & panic attacks.

Are people with panic attacks crazy? Crazy is never a good term for people with psychological conditions and people with panic attacks are hardly crazy. They may seem deranged and a bit psychotic for some people when they experience attacks of panic and terror but this does not suggest that they are.

As if to add to the insult, people with panic attacks are sometimes perceived to have schizophrenia, the most advanced form of psychosis which is marked by severe auditory and visual hallucination as well as aggravated delusions and dysfunctional thoughts. Clearly, there is no relationship between people who feel like they are "going crazy" when undergoing attacks and people who have advanced (and even minor) psychological conditions.

People with panic attacks lose control. Wrong. Panic attacks do not rob a person his sense of control. While a person's thoughts may seem distorted for a while during attacks due to physical symptoms that lend themselves towards this possibility such as shortness of breath and heart attack-like symptoms, this does not mean that the person is losing grip of the reality. Anxiety which normally accompanies panic attacks is a body's way to tell you that something is going wrong. Since this is a defense mechanism, it is not dangerous to anyone, not even the person undergoing the panic attack.

It is good to remember that panic attack happens only in the mind, it may, in fact, be unnoticeable for people surrounding the person during the attack. What exacerbates the attack is the person's conscious thought that it could cause embarrassment or harm to other people. It is the sense of losing control of one's self that makes the condition worse, a thought that is manufactured in the brain, never the total lack of sense of control.

People with panic attacks have chronic heart disorders. While this may be partly true due to the link between mitral valve prolapse and panic attacks, this does not make the assertion entirely valid. People have good reasons to believe that they are having heart attacks or heart failures when they experience episodes of panic attacks since some of the symptoms of both conditions are similar. But such symptoms are perfectly rational when seen from the viewpoint of elevated fear.

For example, people subjected under conditions that stimulate fear experience tightening of the chest, faster heart beat, profuse perspiration, shortness of breath and increased respiration. All these signs are also symptoms of heart attacks which make it easy for most people to believe that instead of having a disorder of the mind, they are having dysfunctional hearts. But then again, similarity in symptoms does not make two completely different conditions alike.

Myths often offer a semblance of the reality that is not hard to believe in. But do not be fooled. Knowing what is the exact truth and not the half lies may serve you well when dealing with conditions that root from and are aggravated by thoughts.

Symptoms of Anxiety

trpurcell@gmail.com — 2010-01-05T01:54:00+11:00

Everyone worries, gets nervous and concerned, feels certain fears, and experiences apprehensions. To a certain degree, anxiousness is healthy as it enables the body to react to certain stimuli and take into action or perform better. As long as the feeling is relative to the situation or problem at hand, it is normal. However, when anxiety gets severe, chronic and irrational, you might already have an anxiety disorder and experience episodes of anxiety or anxiousness.

Common symptoms include:

Fear of going crazy - When under tremendous pressure, a person may feel that he is going crazy. This, however, is more evident during anxiety episodes, but rest assured that you are not going crazy. This is because going crazy is not a conscious act; people who are suffering from mental illnesses do not even know that they have one. Again, if you are experiencing excessive fear or irrational thoughts, you are not going crazy.

Dry mouth - This is a natural occurrence during anxiety attack as fluids are diverted to other parts of the body. To counter dry mouth, sip water or suck sweets to stimulate the production of saliva. In severe cases, doctors may prescribe you with liquid.

Shaking and shivering - These two are necessary functions of the body as it constantly tries to keep the body temperature normal. When the body temperature drops from normal, the muscles spasmodically contract, creating friction between muscles and body tissues, thus increasing the body temperature. During anxiety attacks, shaking and shivering are normal.

Heart palpitation - or the feeling that the heart is missing beats is caused by the release of adrenaline into the bloodstream during an attack. This is perfectly normal and cannot harm you in any way. However, it can cause discomfort.

Body pain - such as neck, shoulder, jaw, mouth and stomach pains, as well as head headaches. When the body is under stress, parts of the body usually get tensed, which results to pain.

Chest pain - is a normal body reaction to anxiety attack because of muscle tension. Sometimes, chest pain is misinterpreted as a heart attack, but it is important to identify from one another as the latter can be deadly.

Shortness of breath - is the most distressing symptom of anxiety attack as it almost feels that the chest cannot expand to accommodate the necessary air that the body needs. Sometimes, it feels that someone is pushing a pillow into your face. Three important points to remember are you will not suffocate, stop breathing or pass out.

Feeling detach or unreal - is another anxiety symptom which alters the way you experience yourself or see reality. It makes you feel that everything around you is like a dream, foggy and unreal.

Recognizing the symptoms of anxiety need not require you to understand the physiology of the human body. What is required is your awareness on each symptoms and the danger they have when ignored.

Different people manifest different behaviors when experiencing anxiety. The intensity of prevailing symptoms differs either. And since the term "anxiety disorders" is coined to refer a group of related conditions rather than a single disorder, symptoms may look different on every anxiety attack. It is important, therefore, to consult a health professional so that it will out any possible condition apart from anxiety.

Subscribe to our Anxiety Cure ebook to get more detail or visit our solution review site to see what treatments are available.