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Each person is different which explains why every person with an anxiety disorder would have different symptoms. On average, the symptoms include both physical as well as psychological difficulties. Frequent urination, difficulty swallowing, abdominal discomfort, dry mouth, rapid heartbeat or palpitations, tightness or pain in chest, shaking, dizziness, shortness of breath, and diarrhea are just some of the physical symptoms.
These symptoms are caused from the reaction of the body and when people become anxious or overly anxious the body releases the stress hormone adrenaline. This is a result of the body’s “fight or flight” response. When these things are happening to a person who is experiencing an anxiety attack, very often they believe that they are going to either die or go crazy. More and more, people who have this disorder are showing up in local emergency hospital rooms thinking that they are having a heart attack.
Psychological symptoms include a detachment from your surroundings, feeling unreal and not in control of your actions, a fear that you are going crazy, insomnia, feeling worried or uneasy all the time, feeling tired, an inability to concentrate, and being irritable or quick to anger. Often, this can lead to panic attacks if left untreated. Sometimes people do suffer from both as they have very similar symptoms except that panic attacks create that “fight or flight” in your body and normally “flight” wins.
Someone who suffers from anxiety or panic attacks could be walking through a grocery store and get the first signs of an attack. This then brings it to the attention of the sufferer and just their thinking about it will cause it to flourish out of control. In this event they would likely flee from the store immediately. It is very likely that in that person’s head they relate that place to the attack and will likely never return. The problem with this is that it had nothing to do with the environment in which the attack occurred because another attack will occur in another place and this will continue until there are not any places left for the sufferer to go.
The panic results in more anxiety and the vicious cycle gets bigger and bigger. In one out of three, the disorder leads to agoraphobia (fear of going out) but this is classified in the following manner or could include all, leaving home alone or at all, being at home alone, driving, shopping, grocery store lines, large stores, malls or public transportation.
When a person is experiencing an anxiety or panic attack although it may not actually last more than ten minutes, it can be so distressing for the person having it that it seems like an eternity. Some people even experience these attacks while they are sleeping and while this is not as common as non sleep attacks, they do occur. They will wake a person out of a dead sleep and they will experience the full blown attack and then it will likely take quite a while to recoup and fall back asleep.
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