Goodbye to Panic Attacks

Anxiety is part of our self preservation mechanisms and is there to protect us.

As with anything else to do with human beings, there will be a wide variance between the manner in which different human beings respond to normal anxiety appropriate situations.

So what is an anxiety appropriate situation?

Supposing your house has been broken into twice and you wake up hearing noises and a couple of bangs. It would be entirely appropriate to feel anxious that perhaps your house is being broken into yet again. However for another person who has no reason not to feel safe at night, the immediate reaction could be that a door  is banging in the wind, or the cat playing in the kitchen. Anxiety level here is likely to be low. In both these instances there is only a perceived threat not a “real” one.

Supposing now that you are on holiday backpacking in some strange country and your guide takes you to a rope bridge suspended far above a large fast flowing rocky river. He tells you the bridge is perfectly safe. Would it be normal to feel anxious? Most people would agree that they were anxious in the degree as to how much they trusted the guide, plus their natural fear of heights and their fear of the unknown. A couple of tourists might decide not to cross the bridge, another couple decide to cross after they have seen someone else doing it. A third couple feel they are being challenged and must face the challenge. Each couple was resolving the problem in a different way. Why?

Feeling anxiety is a totally normal human reaction. However how each one of us reacts to perceived threatening situations varies with our personalities and what we have learned or haven’t learned from our environment. Lastly we will tend to be influenced by other people in our lives.

Anxiety is different from fear in that fear is a reaction to a real threat. So anxiety can turn into fear if the noises in the night result in a burglar appearing at the bedroom door!

The aim of anxiety in our mental makeup is to warn us of possible threats and to keep us safe. The part of our brain which deals with this aspect of our lives is the part that developed very early in our evolution. We often need to react instanteously to a perceived threat and the reaction is instinctive. If we think a car is swerving towards us this is no time for an intellectual discussion with ourselves. Act first, ask questions later, is probably the best strategy.

Anxiety is not only learned it is taught. Even in the animal kingdom, an animal has to teach its all trusting youngster what is safe and what is not.

As we become more familiar with our environments, initial anxiety levels tend to reduce. The first time we drive a car by ourselves is scary. After some time we dont give it a thought.

Learning and experience have taken over and we have built up some instinctive driving skills too. We know that we will react appropriately if another car suddenly swerves in front of us.

So that is how our anxiety mechanism is supposed to work.

In the next post we can look at the physical and mental reactions we have when we feel anxious on a normal scale.

Until then, stay cool!