Recognizing the Symptoms of Anxiety

Home > Anxiety > Recognizing the Symptoms of Anxiety

July 25th, 2009 anxman Leave a comment Go to comments

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. The problem perpetuates itself, happening again and again.

Knowing about the problem is important to 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. Since these feelings can be very scary, you associate them with what you’re doing at the time and the symptoms can return each time you face that situation again. When you return to times, places or situations that created past anxiety for you, it can bring those feelings back again.

This can be a very frightening and overwhelming experience. You may feel like you have no control over what is happening to you and this just increases the fear and panic. To know why this happens, you need to understand how the body is preconcieved to behave against danger or death.

The brain sends blood from the muscles to get your body prepared to either run or fight. Since it is a defense mechanism, our bodies automatically tell us to do this. It’s hard-wired into our brains and we continue to react this way today.

If you feel you are having the symptoms of anxiety, you should speak to your doctor about possible treatments. 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.