Anxiety & Panic Attacks
Introduction
What is anxiety?
It is almost impossible to live without anxiety or fear. It is widespread. We feel anxious regularly, although for each of us different events, situations or relationships will make us feel anxious. Lots of things make us anxious or fearful, from everyday events such as crossing the road or meeting new people to bigger decisions such as which school our children should go to or whether or not we should visit the doctor because we develop a pain. Anxiety affects everybody at times.
Anxiety and fear
There is a subtle difference between anxiety and fear. Fear is the feeling that you have when you see or experience something that frightens you. Anxiety can be regarded as a type of fear that you experience when you are thinking or worrying about something rather than actually experiencing it.
I may fear for my life if a car speeds towards me when I am in the middle of the road but if I am sitting in my house, thinking about and becoming concerned about safety on the roads, I could be described as being anxious about it. Anxiety and fear lead to similar feelings in the body.
Fear is an important defence mechanism that has always been with us. People who do not feel fear can be dangerous to themselves and it can be dangerous to be with them.
Some scientists believe that fear has an evolutionary basis. There are some objects that we are programmed to be scared of. These basic fears include certain animals such as snakes and spiders. As we were evolving, individuals with well-honed fear responses to these animals would have been more likely to survive and they would have been more likely to have had children and passed their genes on to the next generation. It takes millions of years for evolution to catch up and so some of our current fears may be linked to survival mechanisms from a long time ago.
Fear is both physical and psychological
Situations that provoke fear cause a release of hormones and chemicals that change our body functions. These responses were set up for past times when life was less sophisticated and our challenges were more obvious. The hormones and chemicals cause changes in the body that keep us alert, make us steel ourselves perhaps to fight or prepare us to run away.
We saw a predator, we recognised that it could be a danger to us and so we needed to prepare ourselves to fight it or to run away. Alternatively, we saw a possible source of food, perhaps a gazelle, which we did not want to miss the chance of catching because we needed to eat. We needed to think quickly, we needed to be ready to run and catch it, we needed to change our body state so that our performance was optimal.
Catching prey or fighting for our lives requires only short-lived changes in our body physiology. After we have escaped or after the kill there is no need for our bodies to burn excess energy and so it returns to normal.
Our fear responses work well for these sorts of short-lived situations. Our bodies at this time are focused on one thing that is more important than anything else we need to do. When the problem has passed we return to normal and continue with everyday life.
Our fear response is set up to deal with severe short-lived physical problems with which our bodies need to deal.
Fear and anxiety in the modern world
The world has changed, however. Our worries and anxieties now are often not about physical threats or short-term problems. For instance, they may be about the future and how we are going to cope with problems or about situations that may arise but have not yet done so. Anxiety comes from the Latin anxius, which means to worry about an uncertain event.
Our bodies use the same set of responses for anxiety as they use for fear. The problem is that our fear response is built to deal with sudden obvious danger but it does not work well for uncertain events. It does not know when best to switch on or turn off. If our fear response is maintained for too long, we feel panicky and uncomfortable. We find it difficult to continue with our day-to-day lives.
We are set up to deal with short-lived physical challenges but the threats we come across are often diffuse, may last some time and are psychological rather than physical. The threats are not in front of us. They are often situations that we cannot necessarily control. You cannot run away from rising debts, for example. It is impossible to fight job uncertainty physically. Nevertheless, these situations are important threats to our way of life.
We are left with a prehistoric defence mechanism in the twenty-first century. Our bodies are built to deal with short-lived fears, but our world produces longer-
term worries. The two are not a good match and, not surprisingly, the mismatch makes us prone to anxiety problems.
The fact that more people do not suffer from such problems is the result of the fact that humans have an amazing ability to adapt. We all find ways of dealing with the stresses of our complex lives, but stresses and coping are finely balanced.
This book should help you to understand anxiety problems. You can think of an anxiety problem as fear or anxiety that either lasts too long or is too great compared with the threat. As a result, it causes problems in everyday life.
Challenging or threatening situations produce anxiety and sometimes fear. This is a normal reaction that is vital for survival. But if the fear or anxiety is severe, persistent or out of proportion to the threat, or if it impairs your everyday life and your work, you probably have an anxiety disorder.
The good news is that anxiety disorders can usually be treated effectively, often without medication.
This book helps you understand what is happening to you and what treatments are on offer. It is not a therapy book that you can use by itself, but it will be a useful reference before and during the treatment that you receive from your GP, therapist or specialist.
