Anxiety attacks may be the result of a reaction to a specific situation, such as a phobia of public speaking (diagnosed as a “Specific Phobia”) or being in social situation (diagnosed as a “Social Phobia”), or the anxiety attacks may come unexpectedly, in which case they are more formally known as “Panic Disorder”. If you think your anxiety attack is triggered by a specific situation, then you, like most people avoid the situation and develop a phobia, such as avoiding elevators (claustrophobia), social gatherings (social phobia). If the anxiety attack comes on for no reason that you can determine, you may look for things that are causing it, and with each anxiety attack the list of people/places/things to avoid can become longer, eventually leaving you limited in how you live your life. If you end up avoiding being outside, going to the market this is called agoraphobia (literally this means fear of the marketplace) or fear of going out into the world.
Anxiety Attack Symptoms
The symptoms of the anxiety attack itself include at least four or more of the following symptoms, including at least one from the psychological group of symptoms:
- Psychologically, there is a sense of terror (e.g. public humiliation, claustrophobia) , fear of dying, going crazy, or losing control; feeling outside of one’s body or a sense of reality being altered is common
- Cardio-vascular symptoms including rapid heart rate, palpitations, lightheadedness/faintness, chest pain
- Respiratory symptoms including sighing, rapid breathing, a sense of suffocation, difficulty breathing, shortness of breath
- Neuro-muscular symptoms including shakiness, tremor, tingling, numbness, trouble with speech,
- Gastrointestinal symptoms including dry mouth, nausea, stomach pain, diarrhea, and vomiting
- Skin symptoms including sweating, clamminess, flushing and tingling (often in the hands or around the mouth)