Too Many Symptoms of Anxiety Attacks?

Looking into the different symptoms of anxiety attack would help determine whether the person should maintain that certain level of anxiety or if he needs to progress into treating his disorder.

As a normal response to threatening situation, anxiety can be beneficial, such as in cases when a person is going to sing in front of hundreds of audiences, and became driven after he made his apprehensions and fears as his motivations. But severe cases of this condition could affect the person’s way of life, or sometimes become life-threatening.

Anxiety is an affective response that is subjectively experienced as a reaction to either an internal or external pressure, whether it is real or just a product of one’s imagination. Oftentimes, it is experienced as a painful, indistinct awkwardness, or scattered apprehension. It can also be a form of an energy, whose presence is incidental from its effect on attention, learning, behavior and perception.
Before identifying the symptoms of anxiety attacks, here are first some of the characteristics of anxiety, which are briefly stated as the following:

• It is subjectively perceived by the conscious awareness of the person experiencing it.
• It can be a result of a conflict between one’s personality and his environment, or between the forces within one’s personality.
• It can be a reaction to threats of deprivation from something which is biologically or emotionally important to a person.
• Its amount or level is related to the degree of threat to one’s self and the degree to which a certain behavior lessens anxiety.
• The degree of anxiety varies from one person to another.
• It is commonly found or manifested in persons who are having emotional disorders.
• Mild levels of anxiety are beneficial and are considered healthy.
• The individual shows more control of his environments if he has a high capacity to manage his anxiety.
  

The symptoms of anxiety attacks are observed during the assessment of the client, and it can be expressed subjectively by the client or objectively by the person who is observing the client. These symptoms are classified into three categories, namely the physical symptoms, the psychological symptoms and the behavioral symptoms.

Physical Symptoms

• Insomnia
• Dizziness
• Sweating
• Trembling
• Shortness of breath
• Palpitations

Psychological Symptoms

• Depersonalization
• Irritability
• Decreased attention and concentration
• Ineffective coping
• Increasing levels of apprehension
• Impairment of perception of others, situations and events
• Feelings of impending doom, fear, and hopelessness
• Fear of dying
• Fight or flight response

Behaviral Symptoms

• Forgetfulness
• Festlessness
• Rapid speech
• Inability to complete tasks
  withdrawal
• Acing

These symptoms of anxiety attacks sometimes goes with other symptoms of existing health conditions, like diabetes mellitus, heart attack, kidney diseases, inflammations and infections, bone diseases, and cancer. It is, therefore, important the signs and symptoms of other diseases are alleviated so that complications will not occur, and the focus of treatment will shift towards the treatment of the symptoms caused by anxiety itself.

More information about Anxiety Treatment | Back to Symptoms of Anxiety Disorder.