ANXIETY

Have you ever had a panic attack?

Breathing very deeply and quick, like there’s not enough air to breathe; the focus narrows; you’re feeling a tingling in your body; you’re sweating.

This is what someone with a panic attack feels like. The panic attack is a form of the most common mental illness: anxiety. 

Why do so many of us feel that way?

When we are stressed, we mobilize the same physiology as a prey seeing a predator at the end of the field: we’re filled with fear, distress and anxiety. The amygdales (a part of our brain) of humans with sever anxiety are overly sensitive, they identify threats in everyday situations and set off adrenaline chain reaction.

When anxiety starts to get in the way of your life it becomes an anxiety disorder. There are different types of anxiety disorder, based on the kind of fears that are involved:

·        Catastrophic: are beliefs that something really bad is going to happen. For example, the “separation anxiety”, the excessive fear of being away from loved ones.

·        Evaluation: that’s the hallmark of “social anxiety”. Persistent debilitating fear of being watched and judged.

·        Losing control: the fear of the loss of control that comes with panic attacks. For example, “agoraphobia”: you avoid public places that might trigger an attack.

·        Uncertainty: the fear of not knowing what’ s going to happen. This includes generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Where do all these anxiety disorders come from?

Some of these are inherited, so if you have a parent with anxiety, you’re more likely to be anxious yourself. Some studies show that women are up to two times more likely to have an anxiety disorder than men.

Anxiety also seems to have something to do with the balance of chemicals in our brain. There’s a theory that people with anxiety have too little serotonin, the same imbalance that some claim is responsible for depression.

The seeds of anxiety can also be planted by traumatic experiences, because our brain is an association machine. In the “Little Albert” experiment, researchers took a small child and exposed him to a white rat, then they would hit a steel bar with a hammer to make a loud and scary sound every time the rat came near. The researchers created a phobia, fear of small white animals. Then, Little Albert’s fear grew from just a mouse to other animals or objects like a rabbit, a fur muff, even a Santa Claus mask.

What can we do about it?

One of the most popular types of therapy is “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy”, or CBT, where you talk with a therapist to alter negative thought and behavior patterns. For patients with anxiety they use a technique called “exposure therapy”: created scenarios that activate those fears until you get to a point where you learn that you can actually manage those thoughts.

Anxiety helps us stay alive, therefore we can’t completely cure it. Treating anxiety is more about learning how to keep it under control.

SILVIA