Fighting Anxiety – This Is What You’re Up Against

Anxiety is normal response to threat and everyone experiences it. Our ability to feel fear is a necessary survival mechanism which only becomes a problem when this mechanism is activated inappropriately or isn’t “switched off” again when the threat, real or imagined has passed.
So what is it and why do we try fighting anxiety?

The experience of anxiety is a combination of physical and psychological experiences and symptoms rooted deep in our unconscious and primitive past. Most of the more advanced animals (except perhaps the honey badger?) have this response to a perceived threat. Notice how a horse responds to a loud and unexpected noise or your pet dog when you raise your voice to it. This is the “fight or flight response” and is an instinctive response to danger.
When a threat is perceived, the pituitary gland causes adrenaline to be released into your system, causing a number of rapid physiological changes to take place:

• Heart rate increase – causing the feeling of palpitations.
• Increase in respiratory rate – causing sensation of tightness in chest/shortness of breath.
• Blood flow diverted from non essential functions, such as stomach, extremities and skin – causing the feelings of butterflies/nausea and pins and needles/cold hands and chills/sweating.
• Blood flow diverted to the larger muscles along with increase in metabolic rate – causing sensations of muscle tension and restlessness.
• Increase of blood flow to the brain – causing sensations of heightened awareness, including sensitivity to sound and changes in time perception (time slowing down) and dizziness
• Pupils dilate – causing sensitivity to light.

So these are some of the causes and effects of the Fight or Flight mechanism and very helpful they are in their right place. This is an emergency reaction that demands an immediate response to make use of all these changes. But what happens if these powerful changes don’t have an outlet. What happens if there is nothing to fight or flee from?

This mechanism evolved for a very different world. The daily anxiety and stresses of today are much less tangible and immediate than in our past. That doesn’t mean to say they are any less real. How many people live under the constant threat of job loss, money or health worries and the strain this can add to family life. Or less tangible yet, work stress caused by the need to meet targets, conflict with colleagues, the daily commute and so on. It is no longer appropriate to punch somebody you have a disagreement with (well, not in my neck of the woods anyway), nor can you run out of a stressful meeting with your line manager. So all this stress, all this  adrenaline with nowhere to go.

These are some of the long term physical effects of anxiety disorder on the body caused by life’s stresses:

• Raised heart rate – palpitations – possibly fearing that you are having or are about to have a heart attack.
• Fast breathing/shortness of breath – causing hyperventilation – leading to dizziness and possible fear of fainting.
• blood diverted from non essential functions – causing dry mouth, difficulty swallowing, digestive disorders, diarrhoea and/or the need to urinate more frequently, as well as pins and needles/cold hands.
• Blood diverted to the larger muscles – causing muscle tension which can lead to neck and back pain, headaches, shaking and generalised fatigue.

As well as these (and other) physical changes there are also many psychological consequences of long term anxiety:

• Problems sleeping (insomnia), sometimes with vivid and unpleasant dreams.
• Irritability or more likely to get angry.
• Poor concentration.
• A general feeling of uneasiness with no apparent cause.
• An increased tendency to focus on or exaggerate the negative.
• Misinterpretation of/focusing on physical symptoms of anxiety leading to fear of disease or dying.
• Feeling detached from your surroundings and events (derealisation).
• Feeling of being out of control of your life.
• Fear of going mad.
• Panic attacks.

Quite a long and scary list, I think you’ll agree. This is not a comprehensive list and of course not everyone suffering with anxiety and panic attacks will experience all of these symptoms.

These responses are very real and very frightening and are to be taken seriously. The long term effects of chronic anxiety can be significant and in the worst cases can lead to amongst many other things, stroke and heart attack. There’s nothing much more serious than that.

People’s lives are seriously impacted in many different ways by anxiety and it can take many different forms. In my next article I want to talk about how people develop different ways of coping with anxiety and panic attacks. Whether it is by developing different avoidance strategies, from compulsive behaviour, obsessive thinking to using alcohol or drugs and much more.

Thank you for taking the time to read this far because fighting anxiety is something very close to my heart. With this in mind I have taken the plunge and have just started writing my own blog with the purpose of providing a thoroughly researched resource for people suffering with anxiety and panic attacks.
If you would like to see where I am please go to: http://fightinganxietynow.com or get in touch at: simon@fightinganxietynow.com

Any questions, feedback or disagreements gratefully received and answered.

Thanks again.

Simon

About the Author

I’m Simon and for nearly 20 years I’ve worked as a Psychiatric Nurse, both in hospitals and the community. During this time I have had occasion to work with many people suffering with anxiety and panic attacks and have used many different tools in my attempts to help them

My Social Anxiety disorder

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