Most of us have felt the symptoms of anxiety I’m sure you’ve experienced a time when you were stressed or anxious. Maybe it was at a meeting when you had to give a presentation or during a first date. Anxiety is actually a natural response to experiences of fear or stress.
Just to be clear. Getting symptoms of anxiety is natural every once and a while and does not mean that it’s related to an anxiety disorder. Sufferers of anxiety disorders experience much more anxiety than normal people.
This isn’t to say that regular everyday anxiety can’t be linked to anxiety disorders. Anxiety disorders can affect anyone because we all share the same vulnerability in our response to stress. Usually this is referred to as the fight or flight response, or simply the stress response.
Symptoms of anxiety can often make a bad situation worse. However at other times it can work positively. Moreover, anxiety affects us all a little differently. Some may find that it’s a hindrance while other individuals may find that it can actually help.
For instance, say you’ve got your important driving theory test in two days. You don’t want to fail your test so you get in gear and prepare for it. The thought of failing motivates you into studying more. You can see how the stress response has helped you in this instance.
Now, imagine tomorrow you have your 3rd driving test. You’re worried and anxious because you don’t want to fail once again. You think about how disappointed you’ll be if you were to fail again. When the test comes you feel incredibly anxious and unable to control your nerves, teetering close to having an anxiety panic attack. In this case the symptoms of anxiety really have a negative effect on your performance.
The fight or flight response is pretty self-explanatory in it’s name. At the moment when the response is triggered, your heart rate increases, your muscles strengthen and your eyes dilate. Unfortunately your subconscious can not tell the difference between an emotional or physical threat.
Anxiety disorder sufferers are much more sensitive to the stress response. Also, sufferers may associate certain experiences or things with an anxiety attack.
Take for example a sufferer of a phobia. This phobia might not seem threat but to the sufferer it’s very real. It’s actually normal to make negative associations with certain experiences. However, sufferers of anxiety disorders often make negative associations so extreme that they produce symptoms of anxiety just thinking about them.
Fortunately negative associations can be broken. By creating new positive beliefs we can recondition the mind to eliminate negative associations. Anyone can learn how to prevent panic symptoms and live happier and healthier.
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