Fear is a natural and essential survival response-and equally-anxiety, which is fear in response to the perception of a future threat, is a natural and healthy sensation.
Yet when anxiety pervades, or when the sensation of anxiety is out of proportion to the reality of the perceived threat, then natural and healthy anxiety has progressed to an anxiety disorder.
Experienced as an unpleasant and powerful sensation of apprehensive fear, anxiety serves as a survival mechanism. Anxiety provokes physiological changes in the body, increasing heart rate and blood pressure, and releasing a flood of adrenaline-like hormones. Anxiety sends us into a fight or flight bodily response, enabling us to quickly respond to real bodily threats, and it certainly served a necessary function when we as humans were at risk of predatory attack.
Yet for those who experience pervasive, near constant, or periodic but very intense anxiety, what serves as an essential mechanism of survival is perverted into a crippling and horrific psychiatric condition.
People suffering severe anxiety will act with real urgency to minimize the intensity of anxiety symptoms, and in some cases act truly feeling as though their lives depend on immediate and effective action responses. When drugs or alcohol can provide some symptoms relief, there is an incredible temptation to use these substances as a form of self medication, and with this self medication - a real risk for the development of an addiction.
The umbrella term-anxiety disorder-encompasses a variety of conditions with varying symptomology, such as:
- PTSD
- Panic Attacks
- Eating disorders
- Phobias
- General pervasive anxiety
- Obsessive compulsive disorders
- Others
Some manifestations of anxiety result in an ever-present sense of foreboding anxiety, while others can trigger periodic but very intense anxiety attacks. Many cause both types of symptoms expression to varying degrees. All anxiety creates a physiological response, a response intended to allow for brief periods of hyper-vigilance and reflex. This bodily response, when occurring over prolonged periods of time, can create stress hormone imbalances, exacerbating the problems, and even neurological chemical changes. People are simply not built to tolerate extreme anxiety for prolonged periods.
Anxiety Attacks
Anxiety can present as lingering and ever-present, and also as periodic and extreme. The latter manifestation, termed panic attacks or anxiety attacks, results in an extreme bodily response. An anxiety attack overwhelms all logic and reason; it often causes chest pain, high blood pressure, shortness of breath, a feeling of temporary insanity and a real fear of imminent death. Most people suffering an anxiety attack will do anything in their power to make it stop.
Needless to say, anxiety disorders in any form are extremely unpleasant and very serious conditions, and are also very closely linked with both substance abuse and other forms of psychiatric conditions, most commonly depression.
page last update Aug 05, 2010
