Fear is one type of emotion that impacts one’s life significantly. Animals and humans alike have this emotional response based on any events in the environment that poses danger, whether physical, mental, or emotional. Indeed, fear takes on different forms and it will be discussed later. However, the effect that fear has on a person is important because it can potentially alter one’s life and how he or she deals with the environment.

How do you know when one is undergoing fear? Despite of its cause, there are common physical indicators of fear. They are as follows:

•    increase in heart rate and blood pressure
•    tightened muscles
•    inability to focus your senses
•    dilated pupils
•    sweating

Different Forms of Fear

Fear comes in various forms. And yet, its effects are similarly devastating to the person involved. There are various triggers for these fears but all have the potential to impact one’s ability to think clearly and respond to situations logically.

Below is a list of the different forms of fears:

•    Places: crowds, enclosed places, below ground, or heights
•    Animals: rats, snakes, mice, spiders, etc
•    People: strangers, homosexuals, feeling over-responsible for others, talking to groups of people, etc
•    Events: war, crime, public speaking, etc
•    Family member/loved ones: death of family member, getting ill
•    Disaster: hurricane, lightening, injury or pain, blood, death, earthquake, etc
•    Other people’s reactions or responses: rejection, disapproval, being humiliated, being ignored, pretension, insecurity
•    Feelings about one’s self: taking the leadership role, speaking to a large crowd, stage fright, embarassing yourself

There are more different categories of fear that is experienced by people, hence people response differently. Some are able to use that fear they experience in order to sharpen their responses to a given situation. Others, however, do not have control over the level of fear they are experiencing, which often leads to panicking.

Negative Impacts of Fear

Fear is not always negative, provided that you learn how to deal with the feeling of fear. And yet it can be potentially dangerous when the feeling of fear has gotten really extreme. Therefore, it is important that you are able to understand where fear is coming from and deal with it logically. If not, it can lead to you making irrational responses on the situation at hand, such as the following:

•    Inability to make clear and logical decisions.
•    Prevents your ability to trust in your surroundings and other people, which is crucial in your own growth and development.
•    Brings about fear of change due to the uncertainty of events, even though the situation requires it.
•    Results to resistance of help from others.
•    It confines you and unable you to explore opportunities that come your way.
•    You become unmotivated to pursue your dreams.
•    Tendency to exhibit self-destructive behavior.

Confronting Your Fears

Before you even think about overcoming your fears, confronting them is a necessary first step. You start off by recognizing your fear. If you have several types of fears, then you can rank them according to intensity. That way, you will be able to recognize which fear needs attended to the most as it can also produce the most negative impact to you.

The best way to get yourself to confront your fears is realizing what you can get once you have let go of these fears. The lack of such fears in your life will motivate you to take steps to rid yourself of it. Whether it’s regaining control over your life or improving your own self image, losing that fear will help boost your confidence about yourself and the world so you can become a better individual.

Overcoming Fears

The most effective means to overcoming your fears is to change your perspective and behavior towards it. Since it is not easy to do, you need to keep yourself motivated in order to live life free of fears. The first step is identification of fear, which is closely tied with the step of confronting your fear. Then, honestly assess the extent of your fear. This is the only way that you can logically come up with methods that can reduce or eliminate the fear you are experiencing.

When you encounter a stimuli that could potentially trigger the feeling of fear, think of ways to release tension and keep yourself in a relaxed state. This is important since once you have acknowledged fear, it can quickly consume and overtake you. If possible, tap the help of others (whether your friends or family) to provide assistance in conquering your fears. Lastly, this is a long-term procedure and you cannot expect to get rid of your fears overnight.

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

Definition of Anxiety

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

However, most people who have never experienced a panic attack, or extreme anxiety, 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 understand why, they feel they have contracted an illness, or a serious mental condition. The threat of losing complete control seems very real and naturally very terrifying.

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

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

Anxiety is a response to a danger or threat. It is so named because all of its effects are aimed toward either fighting or fleeing from the danger. Thus, the sole purpose of anxiety is to protect the individual from harm. This may seem ironic given that you no doubt feel your anxiety is actually causing you great harm…perhaps the most significant of all the causes of panic attacks.

However, the anxiety that the fight/flight response created was vital in the daily survival of our ancient ancestors—when faced with some danger, an automatic response 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 mechanism. It comes in useful when you must respond to a real threat within a split second.

Anxiety is a built-in mechanism to protect us from danger. Interestingly, it is a mechanism that protects but does not harm—an important point that will be elaborated upon later.

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

When confronted with danger, the brain sends signals to a section of the nervous 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 nervous system has two subsections, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

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

The sympathetic nervous system is the one we tend to know all too much about because it primes our body for action, readies us for the “fight or flight” response, while the parasympathetic nervous system is the one we love 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 explains why when a panic attack occurs, the individual often feels a number of different sensations throughout 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, however, is that the adrenal glands also release adrenaline, which functions as the body’s chemical messengers to keep the activity going. When a panic attack begins, it does not switch off as easily as it is turned on. There is always a period of what would seem increased or continued anxiety, as these messengers travel throughout the body. Think of them as one of the physiological causes of panic attacks, if you will.

After a period of time, the parasympathetic nervous 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 love, because it returns us to a calm relaxed state.

When we engage in a coping strategy that we have learned, for example, a relaxation technique, we are in fact willing the parasympathetic nervous system into action. A good thing to remember 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-increasing spiral of anxiety. 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 worrying thoughts, keeping the sympathetic nervous system going, but eventually it stops. In time, it becomes a little smarter than us, and realizes that there really is no danger. Our bodies are incredibly intelligent—modern science is always discovering amazing patterns of intelligence that run throughout the cells of our body. Our body seems to have infinite ways of dealing 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 convinced?

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 good 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 fear and search for a state of balance. There has never been a reported incident of someone dying from a panic attack.

Remember 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 intended, 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 fear 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 Activity in the sympathetic nervous system increases our heartbeat rate, speeds up the blood flow throughout 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” mechanism is that blood (which is channelled from areas where it is currently not needed by a tightening 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 moved to “active areas” such as the thighs and biceps to help the body prepare 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. Interestingly, most people who suffer from anxiety often feel they have heart problems. If you are really worried that such is the case with your situation, visit your doctor and have it checked out. At least then you can put your mind at rest.

Respiratory Effects

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

A panic attack is associated 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 prepare for action. The feelings produced by this increase in breathing, however, can include breathlessness, hyperventilation, sensations of choking or smothering, and even pains or tightness in the chest. The real problem is that these sensations are alien to us, and they feel unnatural.

Having experienced extreme panic attacks myself, I remember 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 requirement of oxygen and so the sensations would intensify—along with the anxiety. 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 increased breathing, (especially if no actual activity occurs) is that the blood supply to the head is actually decreased. While such a decrease is only a small amount and is not at all dangerous, it produces a variety of unpleasant but harmless symptoms that include 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 nervous 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 activity 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 preparation 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.

Overall, the fight/flight response results in a general activation of the whole bodily metabolism. Thus, one often feels hot and flushed and, because 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 question many people wonder to themselves.

The goal of the fight/flight response is making the individual aware of the potential danger that may be present. Therefore, when activated, the mental priority is placed upon searching the surroundings for potential threats. In this state one is highly-strung, so to speak. It is very difficult to concentrate on any one activity, as the mind has been trained to seek all potential 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 easiest exit from their current surroundings, such as by simply leaving the bank queue and walking outside. Sometimes the anxiety 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 agitated and generally restless in such a situation. Many individuals I have worked with who have suffered from panic attacks over the years indicated that artificial light—such as that which comes from computer monitors and televisions screens—can can be one of the causes of panic attacks by triggering them or worsen a panic attack, particularly if the person is feeling tired or run down.

This is worth bearing in mind if you work for long periods of time on a computer. Regular break reminders should be set up on your computer 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 inwards and begins to contemplate the possible illness the body or mind could be suffering from. This ranges from thinking it might have been something you ate at lunch, to the possibility of an oncoming cardiac arrest.

The burning question is: Why is the fight/flight response 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 afraid of are the sensations themselves—we are afraid of the body losing control. These unexpected physical symptoms create the fear or panic that something is terribly wrong. Why do you experience the physical symptoms of the fight/flight response if you are not frightened to begin with? There are many ways these symptoms can manifest themselves, not just through fear.

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 produce symptoms….and which you perceive as the causes of panic attacks.

This increased adrenaline can be maintained chemically in the body, even after the stress has long gone. Another possibility 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 discussion on diet and its importance).

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

Learn more

http://www.panicportal.com

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

This article is copywritten material

When stress becomes overwhelming, there are quick relaxation techniques you can do almost anywhere to make you feel better almost immediately. Lie on your back or sit comfortable where you are. Tighten all the muscles in your toes, then flex your feet, and slowly move up through your body to your face and neck, holding each stretch for ten seconds. Deep breathing is another relaxation technique that will slow your heart rate, lower blood pressure, and clear your mind. Begin by lying on your back or get into a comfortable position. Inhale slowly through your nose filling the lungs completely over a period of eight to ten seconds. Hold it, and then slowly release your breath through pursed lips, taking two to three times as long to exhale as to inhale. Guided imagery can be done alone or combined with breathing relaxation techniques. Again, lie on your back or get comfortable with your eyes closed. Imagine a peaceful setting at your favorite vacation destination. Put yourself there, feel the warmth of the sun on your cheeks, the breeze blowing through your hair. See how relaxed you are?

There are many other simple relaxation techniques that are helpful tools for coping with stress and promoting long term health. Learn how to relax and find peace by practicing yoga regularly or meditate daily. Indulging in relaxing spa treatments is also another option, which works well with other techniques, like biofeedback and listening to relaxation tapes. Whatever works for you, do more of it. Pamper yourself and don’t get caught up in toxic situations. Your body will thank you for it.

Anxiety disorder in children is often quite difficult in that it can be combined with a lot of other conditions at the same time. It often goes alongside obsessive compulsive disorder in children, as well as ADHD, depression, and many other serious conditions. Although anxiety disorder in children is not clearly understood, there are many ways to treat it. The approach however, has to vary a great deal with the child and the underlying causes of his or her particular case of anxiety disorder.

An approach which has been traditionally discredited in treating anxiety disorder in children, but which is really gaining a lot of ground very quickly, is to use proper diet and nutrition, combined with physical exercise. If a child is poorly nourished and under exercised, they can become anxious, distracted, and unproductive – not to mention unhealthy. This is why, although it does not always completely solve the problem, a good diet must be part of the treatment of anxiety disorder in children. It can even help to treat panic and anxiety disorder in adults as well!

Of course, there are many other things that are done to help to treat anxiety disorder in children. For example, therapy combined with medication is the most classic approach, and has been really quite successful so far. It allows the child to quickly get his or her anxiety under control, and then to address its underlying causes. In addition, a lot can be done to treat anxiety disorder in children through meditation or biofeedback. Supplements are also sometimes used, although in my opinion, they do not work all that well. The only thing is to try them all and see what works.

Do you have the slightest clue what anxiety and panic attack disorders are, or what they entail? Maybe you just pile it in with all the other numerous health conditions. A lot of folks do this. If you’re not burdened by one, you typically don’t care to understand the specifics or hardships. I think that the television show “Monk” exposes a lot. Here the world actually gets to see a character who’s afflicted with a number of illnesses. It’s certainly sad, but they try hard to make it amusing. He’s often depressed about his dead wife, and then he’s obsessive compulsive 24/7. Heck, the guy has more phobias and anxiety and panic attack problems than most human beings. He can’t stand anything. He’s afraid of heights, insects, germs, garbage, dust, and even human contact. If you’ve ever viewed this show, then you surely know what I’m talking about. The major question is; how in the world would the average person deal with all this upset? I doubt they could. Therefore it’s a good thing he’s just a character.

Now days you can learn a great deal concerning anxiety and panic attack disorders on the World-Wide-Web. Why is it you think that some individuals suffer from anxiety and panic attack problems? Is it genetic or a result of nurturing? The answers tend to vary. Possibly a little comes from both ends of the spectrum. One thing I do know is if you have a friend or family member that suffers from anxiety and panic attack disorders, it’s crucial to get them help. They have to learn how to deal with their illness properly.