Anxiety and Its Symptoms

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is the body's natural response to stress. It is a feeling of fear or apprehension about what will come. The nervous feeling before an important life event during a difficult situation is a natural echo of the original "fight or flight" reaction triggered by an adrenaline rush. It is a normal emotion developed by the body as an alarm mechanism to avoid the dangers that directly or indirectly threaten survival. Over time, the concept of threat has expanded, so much so that currently it is not poisonous snakes or werewolves that trigger anxiety. Anxieties now revolve around health, work, money, family life and other crucial issues. Any event or situation, even in perspective, that is perceived as a threat, from the loss of the job, to the outcome of an examination, can trigger an anxious malaise. When this sensation occurs with a certain regularity and with levels disproportionate to the stimulus, a problem can develop that can compromise the quality of life on a psychic and physical level.

Symptoms

Anxiety can occur suddenly, as in panic, or gradually over the course of several minutes, hours or days. It can last from a few seconds to years, although a longer duration is more characteristic of anxiety disorders. Anxiety is perceived differently, depending on the person who experiences it. Feelings can range from butterflies in the stomach to a heart that beats too fast (tachycardia). The discomfort is due to the fact that one feels out of control, as if there was a disconnection between mind and body. The person has a general feeling of fear and worry, or fears a specific place or event.

The general symptoms of anxiety are represented by: a sense of fear and imminent danger; fear of dying or losing control; general voltage; inability to relate. The psychological symptoms of anxiety are: excessive worries about secondary issues; tendency to catastrophism; irritability and impatience; difficulty concentrating and poor attention; feeling of loss of one's personality and sense of reality; memory disorders; sleep disorders.

Neurovegetative symptoms are represented by:

·        difficulty in breathing,

·        feeling of tightness in the chest, air hunger (dyspnoea),

·        accelerated breathing (hyperpnea);

·        chest pain;

·        lightheadedness,

·        dizziness,

·        feeling of instability and

·        lack of balance, imminent fainting (lipotimia);

·        tingling in parts of the body; hot or cold flashes;

·        feeling of suffocation,

·        difficulty in swallowing,

·        feeling of "knot in the throat";

·        dry mouth;

·        fast or irregular heart beat (arrhythmic

·        excessive sweating;

·        sense of weakness and tiredness (especially in the lower limbs);

·        tremors;

·        frequent urination diarrhea;

·        muscle tension.

 Anxiety attacks can vary widely and symptoms can differ from subject to subject because the many symptoms of anxiety can change over time.

Anxiety and depression

A panic attack and an anxiety attack have symptoms in common, but they are different problems. Anxiety disorders can be so stressful and disruptive as to lead to depression. Alternatively, anxiety disorder and depressive disorder may coexist or depression may arise first, while the signs and symptoms of anxiety disorder may occur later. Pathological anxiety, in addition to being a disorder in its own right, accompanies many diseases, especially psychiatric ones: dementia, schizophrenia, depression and mania, sexual, personality and adaptation disorders.