Anxiety Attack Symptoms
Do you know what anxiety attack symptoms look like? I wasn’t fully aware until I started experiencing anxiety for myself last year.
Every single one of us has experienced what it’s like to be anxious. From childhood, where you may be feeling nervous about school, to adulthood and feeling nervous about a change at work – anxiety is a normal part of everyone’s life.
Is it normal?
Worrying is a natural part of being human and you wouldn’t be normal if you didn’t worry at one time or another. But when worry crosses a line and leaves you unable to function throughout the day, or if you have a severe attack that leaves you incapacitated for an amount of time, then you could be having a problem with anxiety.
The feeling itself isn’t a bad thing to have. Anxiety works to keep us out of trouble. Like when you’re out hiking in the woods and come across a bear, anxiety is caused over possibly being hurt by the bear. That’s a healthy anxiety and one that can work for your benefit because it shows you that you need to run away from whatever danger is in front of you.
The emotion isn’t unhealthy when it comes as it’s needed to help us or when it appears in relation to a situation or event where a person would normally experience it.
What makes it a problem is when anxiety begins to steal your normal. You find that you can’t function around other people and you can’t function during your day-to-day activities. You might feel like you can’t function at all.
The anxiety attack symptoms you should be aware of arrive as physical signs.
Sleep
Losing sleep. Trouble falling asleep. Days without sleep – all signs of extreme anxiety. You might even feel tired, but no matter how much you want to sleep, you just can’t.
Heart Health
Another way this emotion shows up is found in the way the heart reacts. Anxiety causes the heart to pound like you?re very frightened or you?ve finished a long, hard run. You may begin to breathe faster in shorter, quicker breaths. Headaches that rebound or won?t go away are a sign that something?s going on, too. You might begin to shake or have periods where you feel dizzy.
Depression
Other symptoms include hyperventilating and panic that cloaks you with a heaviness you can’t shake. You might experience a sense of impending doom, even when you know nothing is going on externally to bring on that feeling.
The time lapse for an episode can vary from mere seconds to almost an hour. They may come and go several times throughout the day or you may have one on one day but nothing the next. There might not be a pattern at all to when you get the symptoms.
Anxiety attack symptoms can be very scary to go through, but they can be managed with the right tools you need to learn how to cope with the anxiety. Yes, it’s scary, but you don’t have to live in the fear. There is help available.
