What Is An Anxiety Attack?

If you have ever suffered from an anxiety attack, you know it. Your heart seems to be leaping out of your chest and you feel as though you are crawling out of your skin. Your skin feels cold and clammy, you are trembling and even shaking. Your thoughts are jumbled and you may even have trouble breathing or swallowing. You feel as though you are a prisoner of your mind, and you are.

About 20 percent of the population will, at one time in their life, suffer from an anxiety attack. Many people who end up having an anxiety attack wind up in the hospital emergency room, convinced that they are having a heart attack. Many of the anxiety attack symptoms are similar to that of a heart attack, although heart attacks do not generally present with heart palpitations. You will notice that something is wrong.

Many people feel little sympathy for those who have anxiety and feel that they should just “snap out of it.” What most do not realize is that anxiety disorders cause anxiety attacks and they are very real. Someone can no more snap out of an anxiety attack than they can a broken leg.

Our bodies are trained to react in a certain way when we feel under a great deal of stress or face life threatening situations. But sometimes, the brain chemicals are unbalanced, giving us the sensation that there is something wrong, although in reality, there isn’t. Our bodies then search for a way to come up within something to justify the feelings we are having.

Many people who have frequent anxiety attacks have obsessive compulsive disorder. In such cases, people will have intrusive thoughts that will bother them to the point that they repeat rituals. Frequent hand washing is one of the rituals often repeated by someone with obsessive compulsive disorder.

An anxiety attack is our body’s reaction to stress. The stress is usually something that occurs environmentally. Most people who have anxiety attacks do so after a stressful event in their lives. They often come after the death of a loved one, divorce or loss of a job. Someone who suffers more than one anxiety attacks is habitually diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

The anxiety disorder can be a number of different disorders including general anxiety disorder, panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, social disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder. Most of the symptoms are similar to one another and the treatment for these symptoms is also very similar.

Anti-anxiety medication is usually combined with an anti-depressant as well as therapy to combat anxiety attacks. While anxiety attacks can be very scary and even crippling to a point, they can also be treated in a number of different ways, including medication, therapy and even herbal treatments. While an anxiety attack is not a life threatening illness, it can end up causing havoc in your life if you do not get some treatment.