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Anxiety, Stress and Panic Attacks and Symptoms I think it may be useful to clarify the difference between Worry, Anxiety, Stress and Panic Attacks:
One of the commonest amongst my clients is that promotion at work which sounds and feels great until you discover and realise that now you have to do 'Presentations' and that involves 'Public Speaking'. You go into near-panic feelings at this prospect which creates a physical response in your body akin to a panic attack. Don't you just love those meetings at work where you've all just arrived and are sitting around the conference table. Whoever is running the meeting says, "Let's all introduce ourselves starting here," and points to someone randomly. You are some way around the circle and so you start rehearsing in your mind what you are going to say - and your heart starts banging in your chest, you get those butterflies or sick feeling in your stomach. You start to sweat and your mind goes blank. You don't hear or listen to what anyone says as your mind tries to go into overdrive but just won't work. It comes to your turn and you blab out your piece which is nothing like you have been rehearsing and you sit down wishing the earth would swallow you up, and why couldn't you have been first on and got it over with. You may actually listen to the remaining people. You have to make a speech at a wedding. You have written it out carefully, time and time again. Your turn is coming closer and the old butterflies start, you get up to deliver and your mouth goes dry. You take a deep breath because you think it will help not knowing it is exactly the WRONG thing to do. (Wrong because most people get it wrong - they fill their chests up and have taken a full breath which is counter-productive. Deep Breath means deep down, that is where the chest doesn't expand but only the tummy protrudes outwards, otherwise known as "breathing with the diaphragm". If you want to understand this better then watch a baby asleep and watch its tummy going up and down, or a pet - cat or dog if you have one.) You try and concentrate on what you have written and the words don't make any sense. The hand holding your carefully written speech won't stop shaking. You are making such an idiot of yourself and you start to feel hot and begin to flush. Your jokes fall flat and you only hear one embarrassed titter somewhere but you can't tell where from because of the mush in your ears. God, this is awful let me die now. Everyone else in the room is glad it's not them. Got an interview coming up? Read Kirsty's Story and see how much you identify with.
Stress takes many forms and can have a harmful effect on our psychological well-being and physical health. An individual's life can be enormously affected by stress especially when it's excessive and prolonged. Not only their health and working life, but also their relationships. Unfortunately the sufferer is often not aware of the problem, going through their daily lives in a constant state of background anxiety. The very nature of the problem, being the feeling of an inability to cope, leads many to deny it exists and they suffer in silence. There are two different aspects to stress - the psychological and the physical. Psychological stress is most easily described as a feeling of being unable to cope any more, with a corresponding feeling of despondency, a lack of self-worth and value which can lead to frustration and a never-ending circle of gloom and near panic. Activities that once were easy become a struggle. The ability to think clearly or logically becomes impaired. Sleep is affected and the situation worsens. This can result in finding it very hard even getting out of the door to go to work let alone being motivated for good work performance . It causes problems with relationships both at work, at home and socially. Physical
stress is caused by the body's reaction to the psychological stress
making the body run on adrenaline in an almost permanent state of the
classic 'Fight or Flight' syndrome. The 'fight or flight' is the normal physical response to danger,
which prepared our ancestor caveman's body to either fight or run to save life,
stay alive and
pass genes onto the next generation. This response would normally have been
fairly short-lived, once the danger had passed and the physical body
returned to its normal quiescent state.
The competitive world that we live in now creates difficulties because
the human body's evolution is far slower than the rapid advance of our intellectual
capabilities. Whilst this competitive world and the anxieties it
creates are not usually life-threatening the primitive ancestral
sub-conscious mind doesn't know that they are not life-threatening and
so it reacts as though they are stimulating the physical body into the
fight or flight response. The
human body and mind is not designed to live with this type of stress
day after day, week after week, month after month. If it goes on for
too long it produces all the classic symptoms of stress:-
If you suffer from any or all of
these, whether caused by stress at work, at home, socially or something as yet
unknown, then go to the
Contact page to make an appointment. |
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