Why Do Some People Suffer Anxiety Attacks?
The word "anxiety" simply means a state of uneasiness in the mind due to some anticipated future event. When this state of stress gets prolonged and becomes a daily occurrence with aggravated symptoms we call these stress attacks as anxiety attacks. The science of Psychiatry says that by the time you have reached this state, anxiety has actually turned out to be a disorder in your body.
So, how do people fall prey to this disorder? The onset of anxiety happens because we have to face all kinds of situations in a day. Some of these situations are stressful and some are not. Stressful situations are those situations where we feel or expect that some kind of danger might befall us, either emotionally or physically. As a result, when we are subjected to these stressful situations, our body releases some hormones. These hormones allow our mind and body to react more quickly in the face of any incoming danger or state of insecurity. Therefore, to save ourselves from these incoming dangers, we can either choose to fight or we take a flight. In either case, the excess hormones that have been produced get used up. Anxiety is, therefore, a normal body mechanism which is essential for our survival. A typical state of anxiety lasts for not more than 10 minutes. In some people, these states can even last for as short a period of time as 1-5 minutes. However, the next question that comes to our mind is, "Why and how does this absolutely normal body mechanism turns out to be a disorder?" Anxiety attacks become a disorder when we start building up these hormone levels in our body without there being any actual danger to us at all. In other words, we start hypothecating some imaginary stressful situations in our minds, as a result of which the body releases hormones even when they are not needed. In such situations, the excess hormones do not get an outlet, and hence, we start storing them in our body itself. As the hormone levels increase, our capacity to imagine hypothetical stressful situations also increases. This leads us to more frequent panic attacks. The symptoms also become more and more severe because due to the excessive storage of hormones in our blood, the capacity of the body to experience anxiety also increases. This prompts the body to react more aggressively with each attack, which means that each passing attack adds up more hormones into the blood than the previous one. And this is how a normal body survival mechanism becomes a deadly disease. Nowadays, many people are dying of anxiety attacks all over the world, and more so in the US. This means that it is high time when we start looking into what we think, and how we think. This will certainly take us further in enjoying a long and healthy life. |