A complete guide to anxiety attacks

Just like normal emotions such as happiness, grief, frustration, anxiety is also an emotion. Emoting anxiety is often healthy as it allows people to freely talk of what they are feeling. However, if a person constantly or frequently feels anxious, it may turn into a medical disorder. Anxiety disorder is one of the categories of mental health that leads to feeling excessive nervousness, fear, worry and apprehension. 

According to The American Psychological Association (APA), “anxiety is an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts and physical changes like increased blood pressure.” These medical conditions can alter how a person feels or processes thoughts, emotions that drastically affects their behaviour. Anxiety disorder also has several physical symptoms that not many people are aware of. 

Often, mild anxiety is vague as they would appear only once a while, however, severe anxiety can seriously affect one’s day to day activities and chores. Globally, anxiety disorder affects more than 4 million people. However, only about 36% of them receive treatment. While some turn a deaf ear towards these disorders, others are too societal stigma oriented which makes them believe that such disorder are non-existent. 

While there are a number of diverse diagnoses that constitutes anxiety disorder, the symptoms mentioned below are of the generalised anxiety disorder. (GAD)

• An uncontrollable feeling to worry
• Restlessness 
• An increase in irritation and mood swings 
• Finding it difficult to concentrate for long period of time
• Sleep difficulties. One may find it difficult to fall asleep or they may sleep for long hours and still feel tired. 

The Mental Health Disorder community classifies anxiety disorder into many types such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and acute stress disorder. 

What are the causes of these anxiety disorder?

Though one cannot specifically point out to a case as these medical disorders are complicated. However, there are a few possible generic causes that may lead to these medical conditions.

• Environmental stressors: these may include difficulties at work, any relationship problem or even family issues. 
• Genetics: People who have family history associated with anxiety, can be likely victims of these disorders. 
• Brain chemistry: many psychologists suggest the misalignment of hormones or other electric signals in a brain that could result in anxiety 
• Withdrawal from illicit substances: depending on the extent of addiction, the effects may intensify and lead to anxiety 

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