Recognizing the Symptoms of Anxiety

If you or someone you love may be suffering from a problem with anxiety, it’s important to be able to recognize the symptoms of anxiety. People have often asked this question over the years and wondered how they can spot signs of anxiety for themsleves. The first step to getting treatment is to learn the signs.

Often people have a problem with anxiety and they're not even fully aware of it. They may feel ashamed to tell anyone what they are going through and they fail to realize that thousands of other people are going through the exact same thing. This feeds into the anxiety so that people have panic over just the thought that they might have another anxiety attack. This is a problem that continues again and again.

Knowledge is very important and knowledge of this problem will help you recognize it and treat it. There are quite a few different symptoms that can manifest themselves through anxiety but the official measurement scheme used by the medical community is called DSM-IV. This system says you are having an anxiety or panic attack if you have four or more of these following symptoms:

· Fear of dying

· Strange warping of reality

· Sounds are not normal; blurry vision

· Increase in heart rate

· Increase in breathing; deep breathing

· Chest pain or uncomfortable feeling

· Nausea

· Tingling sensation or numb sensations

· Fear that you are going crazy

· Fear of no control of yourself

· Lack or breath or feeling that you are being smothered

If you have four or more of these symptoms or recall having them at the last time you felt you might have had an anxiety attack, chances are you did. These feelings can be so frightening that you associate them with whatever you were doing at the time and find that the symptoms return if you ever go to do that same thing again. When you return to times, places or situations that created past anxiety for you, it can bring those feelings back again.

This is both frightening and overwhelming. Your panic and fear increase even more when you feel like you have no control. When you understand how the body reacts to danger or death, you will know why this happens.

The brains pumps blood to muscles to prepare us to fight or run. Since it is a defense mechanism, our bodies automatically tell us to do this. We react this way today because it's become hard-wired into our brains.

It's important to talk to your doctor about treatment options if you have the symptoms of anxiety. If anxiety or panic attacks prevent you from enjoying the things you once did or from having a normal life, you should seek to make changes in your life to prevent this.

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Anxiety Physical Symptoms

Are you aware of anxiety physical symptoms and how to recognize these symptoms in your own life? Almost everyone has anxiety from some time to time. Usually people with panic or anxiety disorder have the symptoms more often and they are more severe.

Sometimes the symptoms are so severe that they can even send a person to the emergency room thinking they have a real physical ailment. Often it makes people feel like they are dying, having a heart attack or unable to breathe. It can make their panic and anxiety worse that they are often sent home from the hospital and told there is nothing wrong with them.

While there is usually no real physical cause, anxiety still manifests itself in a variety of physical ways. Here are some of the most common physical symptoms people can experience from anxiety. One of the most common physical symptoms of anxiety is shortness of breath.

Sometimes this symptom is described as not being able to get enough air in the lungs. You may feel that you are suffocating. The feeling that you will die from lack of oxygen causes many people to have instant panic and fear. Even those these feelings are not really dangerous or threatening, they feel like they are.

Another common physical symptom is muscle tension. Many things can cause muscle tension but if you have panic disorder or anxiety disorder, you may chronic muscle tension. It can happen so often that you forget what it feels like to have relaxed muscles.

Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) is believed to help relieve muscle tension, like that from panic and anxiety. There is less muscle tension when the body is in a relaxed state so fewer anxious feelings.

Frequent headaches are another anxiety physical symptom. A lot of people with panic disorder also suffer from frequent headaches. They may attribute these headaches to something else when in reality they just need to learn a way to deal with their anxiety to make the headaches go away. There was even a study that showed two out of three patients with panic disorder have a serious problem with headaches.

People with anxiety also suffer from GI, gastrointestinal symptoms. These could include stomach pain, heartburn, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and more. If they are unable to find a medical cause, it is often just called “functional GI symptoms”.

Many studies have shown that there is a link between depression, anxiety and functional GI symptoms. Studies show that about 40% of people with anxiety also have chest pain. Discomfort and chest pain are also commonly listed as anxiety symptoms.

If you feel you have anxiety physical symptoms, you should speak to your doctor right away to make sure your symptoms are from anxiety and to rule out any physical causes. You can learn to live life like normal again when you talk to your doctor about the treatment options for you and your anxiety.

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