Many people have funny notions about what causes anxiety attacks. There are all kinds of myths and misinformation. Anxiety attacks are hard to deal with as it is without having people look at you strangely, like you are afflicted with some sort of communicable disease. Worse yet some people banter around the word crazy when referring to people with anxiety attacks.
If you are a person that is dealing with anxiety attacks, finding information about what the cause of anxiety attack is can be frustrating. There are many different ideas about the causes of anxiety attacks and some of them are wrong. When a person is having regular anxiety attacks they can feel depressed and bad about themselves because they feel it is their fault. Many people feel they are the cause of the anxiety attack and that if they just had greater control over themselves that they would not have them.
Suffererss who have knowledge about the cause of anxiety attacks are the individuals who are most likely to succeed and breakthrough and having this is one of the greatest tools to use to stop them. It is knowledge, not control that is the key to overcoming anxiety attacks.
One of the more common myths about the cause of anxiety attacks is that a person is going crazy, more specifically, that they have some form of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a genetic disorder that is not caused by anxiety. It may contain anxiety components, but is much different than anxiety attacks. People with schizophrenia usually have disjointed thoughts, speech babbling and are plagued with delusions and hallucinations. People with anxiety attacks usually do not suffer from these symptoms.
Schizophrenia usually begins in a persons teen age years and is diagnosable by age 25. Schizophrenia is not a disorder than suddenly appears; it is a gradual debilitating disease that a person is born with. So unless you have a strong family history of schizophrenia it is not something you should worry about nor should you think that it is a cause of your anxiety attack.
Another belief about the cause of anxiety attacks is that it is about losing control. People believe that they will die, lose organ function or lose their grip on reality. People believe that you might go on killing spree or pass out in a car and run into a shopping mall.
These are all fallacies of the mind. You are not going to do any of those things. Anxiety is the bodies natural response to feeling that it is in danger. Anxiety is not dangerous and neither are you.
A lot of people with panic attacks believe they are going to lose total control of themselves. The fact is that most of the anxiety attack occurs in the mind. People around the person having the attack rarely notice they are having a problem. The fear of embarrassing yourself can actually make the anxiety worse. It is the feeling of losing control in front of others that can trigger the anxiety attack. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy except that people usually never lose control of themselves during an anxiety attack.
Some people feel that when an anxiety attack occurs that they will pass out in a public place. They imagine that they will be in the middle of a grocery store lying prone and unconscious in the floor. Worse than that some people believe that they will have an attack and no one will be around. They worry that they will be strewn in some ditch somewhere.
The fact is the fainting is not common with people having a panic attack. Fainting is usually the result of not enough oxygen going to the brain. When a person is having an anxiety attack their heart is usually pumping hard to circulate oxygen rich blood through out the body. A person may feel light headed because they may be hyperventilating but this usually does not lead to a fainting spell.
Another myth about anxiety attacks is that they are somehow caused by the heart. People believe they are having a heart attack. They feel tightness or pain in their chest, their heart is beating fast, they may be sweating and their respirations have increased. It is easy to see where the myth came from but the heart is not the cause of an anxiety attack not does an anxiety attack result in a heart attack.
Heart attacks usually occur when the heart is under stress that is during physical exertion. Panic attacks occur at anytime. Heart attacks are usually abated by resting and reducing the stress on the heart. A panic attack usually goes on and a person must calm themselves mentally before it really begins to subside. It is not a matter of control; it is more a matter of relinquishing control.
If you were to hook a person up to an EKG that is having a heart attack you would see unusual heart beats. A person having an anxiety attack usually only has an elevated heart rate.
The best way to reduce your anxiety of your heart is to see your doctor and have an EKG. Once you realize there is nothing to worry about it should reduce your anxiety over having a heart attack.
As you can see people worry about symptoms of anxiety attacks and misdiagnose themselves. They believe that the cause of an anxiety attack is mental or physical disease. Once they realize that it is not they can learn to overcome anxiety attacks for good.
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