Anxiety attack symptoms
It is a painful emotion, like some are coming after you all the time.
The physical symptoms of anxiety are myriad; shortness of breath, rapid heart rate, shakiness, dizziness, unsteadiness, numbness and tingling, lightheadedness, feelings of choking, sweating. Most people reckon the physical symptoms to be the most distressing part of the anxiety experience. In terms of cognitive symptoms, anxiety strongly influences attention such that one's focus becomes narrowly directed toward the danger at hand. With some forms of anxiety (e.g. panic disorder, performance anxiety) attention becomes self-focused. With regard to memory retrieval, anxiety creates significant blocking of non-threat related information; you just can't think of anything but what you're anxious about! When anxious, one's automatic thoughts and mental images tend to be catastrophic; that is, there is an exaggeration of the dangerousness of the situation and a simultaneous underestimate of one's control over that danger.
So, to summarize, when the anxiety experience is activated, there is an unsettling
urgent emotion present, intense physical involvement the body is alerted in a way that is impossible to ignore. Attention becomes narrowly focused on whatever the source of the anxiety is to the extent that other information becomes inaccessible. Plus, the disasterousness of the situation is amplified and control resources are minimized in one's mind.
This quite rapid activation of symptoms has one behavioral purpose, Flight. And it is without a doubt the most important mechanism, in terms of survival, that we have in the circuitry of our brains. If anxiety didn't happen in the face of danger, we'd all perish for sure. Anxiety alerts us to danger and makes us more likely to escape from it. However, some people experience an inappropriate level of anxiety given the dangerousness of the situation and/or have enduring anxiety despite a relatively safe environment. Anxiety attack symptoms or anxiety problems can be described as false alarms that are too frequent, too profound, and or too prolonged.
