Anxiety is something we all experience at some time in our lives and its associated mostly with stressful experiences on our lives. In early adolescence, when young people are searching for their identity, hormones begin to change and as part of their development lots of neurochemical processes and actions take place inside your brain making your behaviour become more difficult for yourself and others. Stress and anxiety go together like you and your mobile phone or MP3 player. One influences the other and can have a major impact on your thinking processes, and on your attitudes and how you make sense out of the social world you live in.
One form of anxiety is called Panic anxiety disorder or panic attack for short.
It can be scary to teenagers and older adults as it's always diffucult to understand what is really causing it. Stress is usually the main cause of you having a panic attack. Most attacks come on suddenly leaving you breathless ands cared. This is called Hyperventilation and I want to explain on this page how to understand it, and recognize the symptoms and how to overcome an attack. Many people with strong personalities suffer from panic attacks which are stress induced , but they can be successfully overcome. Let me explain to you how stress causes the problem as well as how to self diagnose the condition in its early stages. Can I suggest to you that it is always important to see it as a psychological one. The society we live in and especially youth culture seems to push aside all emotional experiences instead of learning how to confront them and cope with them by successful management. We must avoid stigmatization of emotional feelings and anxiety as both are treatable and can lead you to happiness and self fulfilment. If you are anxious now as you read this page, take positive control by not blaming yourself and learn the techniques which will follow.
The relationship between stress and anxiety is complex and we are still trying to make sense of it, however we do know enough to understand the relationship between stress as a causal factor among others in panic attacks. Your brain has its own natural tranquilizers built inside the hormone system We call these receptors, and when they receive messages from the hormones they respond to their signals and the result is tranquillity or pain relief. As stress levels rise inside the mind. The brain increases its natural tranquilizers, and painkillers to protect us during the fight-flight syndrome.Often this can be an emergency situation as we are unsure as to what to do.
Here's an example.
You have been dating your girlfriend for one or two years and are deeply in love. She's cool and both of you share lots of events together. Your mates like her and she is easy to relate to. Your parents also like her and she has been in your house lots of times. Both of you communicate very well, like dancing and socializing and get on well at work and school. However, recently the relationship has become sort of stressful as she talks a lot about one of your mates she is mildly attracted to.You feel very stressed out but cannot talk to her about it as she might just break up.These thoughts keep going around in your head day after day and you can't sleep at night. The stress of this situation is sufficient to trigger off a panic attack. You are in a "Fight-Flight" situation. The pain and anxiety you feel is the body's way of telling you to stop worrying and being anxious and do something about it. This is the turning point as many young people cannot deal effectively with the stress and panic of losing their girlfriend and turn to suicide as an option.Taking you own life is not the answer.You can overcome the breakup like millions of others and who knows, she may just come back again or after the panic attack , you meet another really cool girl in your part time job or at school. Heed the warning signals of your body and get help by emailing this helpline or see your GP for medication. The second factor in panic anxiety is a hormone called cortisol. It's produced inside your adrenal glands and works along with adrenaline. When we experience stress like the situation above, the brain increases its levels of cortisol and it forms a barrier to the brains own natural tranquilizers. The result is very high anxiety leading to a panic attack.` Gillian Butler and Tony Hope in their book " Manage your Mind."have pointed out that panic attacks are triggered by misinterpretation of normal events, play a vital part in triggering a false alarm. They further state that this trigger is really
harmless or a normal occurance, which sets off the alarm system because it is interpreted as dangerous. Catastrophic misinterpretations are as the authors suggest, the main triggers of panic and in fact that they cannot be explained makes them more distressing. Some people experience internal triggers such as pounding heartbeat, feel they are about to have a heart attack, will suffocate or choke and so on. The evidence for these beliefs comes from their feelings, according to the authors. They are irrational or meaningless. It is the sense of panic one feels as if these things will happen to them. As they suggest, any physiological change in the body can be misinterpreted.