What Are Anxiety Attacks And How Are They Caused?
Dealing with anxiety is never easy. When it starts to feel ramped up, it can seem as if you won’t find any relief from it. At some point, most people will experience anxiety at least once in their lives. Anxiety attacks, however, are a completely different ball game.
What Is An Anxiety Attack?
We all tolerate stress differently. When someone is going through an anxiety attack, it can be triggered for a few different reasons. Either through prolonged or repeated exposure to stressful circumstances, unsafe conditions at home, or excessive worries about work or school performance.
Most people have heard of having a panic attack. Anxiety attacks do differ from those because they can often be traced to very specific triggers and slowly build up over time.
Causes Of An Anxiety Attack
Before we get into the specifics of what causes anxiety attacks, let’s go over the basics of anxiety and how it is caused.
At the core, anxiety is a learned emotional response. In ancient times, our ancestors developed anxiety as a response to life-or-death situations. Now known as the “fight or flight” mode, they could either stay and fight through the danger or choose to flee from it. It kept them alive. Now, though? There aren’t really enough situations that we encounter on a daily basis to warrant this type of reaction. However, it is embedded into our DNA to hold on to this response, even if there are no real dangers present – just what our minds tell us is a scary situation.
Specific Causes Of An Anxiety Attack
The exact causes of an anxiety attack will vary from person to person. Generally, they can be traced back to some of these reasons:
Prolonged exposure to stress
Chronic pain or medical problems
Trauma from childhood
Going through a traumatic experience
Signs Of Anxiety Attacks
Even though an anxiety attack slowly builds up over time, that doesn’t mean there aren’t specific signs and symptoms associated with it.
As anxiety slowly builds up, it puts the body in a hypervigilant state of mind. This state of mind causes them to stay highly focused on future threats that may come, instead of staying grounded in the current time. Someone may experience:
An increase in heart rate
Feeling nauseated often
Chills or cold sweats
Difficulty breathing
An overwhelming sense of dread
Tightness in the chest
Tingling or numbness sensations throughout the body
Trembling
Treatment And Prevention Of Anxiety Attacks
If anxiety is embedded into our DNA, you might believe it is not much you can do about it. Thankfully, that is not the case. Even though anxiety is a most common mental health concern, it is still highly treatable.
If you suspect you are in a period of a building anxiety attack, there are steps you can take to calm your “nervous” nervous system down.
Write down and acknowledge any symptoms you are experiencing
Right down the racing thoughts, you notice as these symptoms become ramped up
Write in a journal about your racing thoughts and what is worrying you at that moment
Practice yoga or meditation
Go for a walk or exercise, which releases feel-good endorphins in the body
More Ways To Help Anxiety Attacks
Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we can’t get our bodies to calm down during an anxiety attack. That doesn’t mean that something is wrong or you are broken. Instead, it could indicate that Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), or chronic anxiety, is starting to develop.
In either case, you deserve and can find long-term relief and manage these challenging symptoms. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us for help through anxiety treatment. Treatment for all forms of anxiety can improve through our practitioners’ services, including talk therapy, acupuncture, and mindfulness coaching. We encourage you to reach out to make an appointment or to learn more about the therapeutic modalities we offer at the Recovery Collective. We understand how challenging this condition can be. Anxiety therapy can help.