The Symptoms of Anxiety and Panic Attacks

by Vlasta Kuster

The anxiety manifests in both - physical and emotional symptoms. It is difficult to define, the simplest way to describe it is as a mixture of anxiety, fear, restlessness and panic.

Among the

Physical Symptoms of Anxiety

Image by heliofil from Pixabay

are

• a rapid heartbeat,
• a lump in a throat,
• tension in a stomach,
• unusual head pressure,
• vertigo,
• fainting,
• soft or heavy legs,
• etc.

Among the

Emotional Symptoms of Anxiety

are

• restlessness,
• neurosis,
• fears,
• etc.

Anxiety can occur in different situations. Sometimes people suddenly get overwhelmed by the feelings of anxiety at home...

...where they are in a safe environment among the members of their families.

Sometimes these feelings arise among a mass of people, in the shops, at the post office or in a bank.

Some people become anxious

• when they have to stay away from home,
• when they go on a trip, or
• when they have to sleep over the night in a different place, or
• when they move away from home.

Wherever they travel, they always wonder how they would find help if they suddenly got the feelings of anxiety and fear.

And they start to avoid, for example, a motorway, or driving through the tunnels, or across the viaducts.

They avoid long journeys or, for instance, traveling to the sea.

They always question:

• What will I do if I get the unexpected feelings of anxiety?
• Where is the nearest branch on the highway where I could get off the main road?
• How far away is the first health clinic where I could get help?
• Where is the nearest doctor?

People who suffer from anxiety begin to live their lives based on their fears and their negative physical feelings.

The so-called "fear of fear" develops, which begins to shape their lives.

To some people more, to others less...

The extreme form of anxiety is a panic attack.

The extreme form of anxiety is an attack of panic or a panic attack, one of the most difficult experiences that a person can undergo at all.

The Symptoms of Panic Attack

The panic attack is a very powerful experience of

• fear,
• horror,
• death fear,
• the feeling that a person would go mad, that (s)he would die.

The whole body participates in a panic attack, and there is a whole range of symptoms that can vary slightly from person to person.

Usually, there is

• accelerated breathing,
• powerful heart beats,
• strong sweating,
• a tingling all over the body, etc.

Some people experience

• dizziness,
• giddiness,
• a strong tension in their bodies,
• and also other very intense symptoms.

When a panic attack happens for the first time, people usually think it is a heart attack and they are sure that they will die on the spot.

Most of them go to an emergency immediately after the panic attack, but the medical examinations usually do not show anything special, so that people go home reassured there is nothing physically wrong with them.

Nevertheless, it is still not clear to them what is really happening to them.

After a while they learn to live with their anxiety or with their panic attacks, and adjust their lives somehow to these conditions.

They learn that they will not die during a panic attack, that nothing unpleasant will really happen in reality, despite the fact that the feelings they experience are really very, very bad.

And why does anxiety happen at all?

Anxiety is the body's call for help.

That it has had all too much, that it cannot take it anymore. People experience both good and bad moments during their lives, we could say that the stress accumulates in the body. And it does not accumulate in a material form, but in an energy form.

Because people are also emotional creatures, negative emotions are created in us by stressful events. We experience fear, we experience anger, sadness, weakness, offense, etc. Every such an event marks us in some way.

Any such a moment leaves us with the consequences. Every powerful stressful event is stored in our mind in the form of a memory, and this memory brings a negative emotion that is the same as we felt when the stressful event actually happened.

To understand how to deal with anxiety, one needs to understand what happens in us when a stressful event occurs.

During a stressful event, besides the painful memory, there is a disorder in the energy system of our body, and this disorder is nothing but a negative feeling that we get by the event (e.g. anger, sadness, fear, horror...)

The more stressful events we experience in life, the more negative emotions are printed in our bodies in the form of an interruption to our energy system, and the more difficult it is also for us to function.

Vlasta Kuster holds an MA degree in Basic Medical Sciences and she is also an accredited & certified EFT tapping practitioner. Vlasta uses her 3-month EFT therapy in her work to help people to do away with panic attacks and anxiety for good. She has more than 10-year experiences in EFT therapy and achieves at least 90% success in permanently eliminating anxiety and panic attacks. You may contact her through her website freeofpanic.com