Causes of Panic Attacks and Anxiety Disorders

There is a wide range of treatment plans for these maladies; however, doctors and their patients fail to analyze the root causes of anxiety disorders and panic attacks.

Panic attacks can come suddenly, while others have a definite, known cause. However, every disorder has some factor responsible for it.

Here are some common factors that cause panic attacks and anxiety disorders.

1. Genetic

Studies have revealed the fact that people can inherit their panic attacks or anxiety disorders from their maternal or paternal ancestors. The disorder can be passed on from the paternal or the maternal side of the family.

Twins are more susceptible to panic attacks; if one twin gets it, the other develops a panic attack too.

Many times, a petty domestic issue or a problem can trigger a panic attack, and genes have nothing to do it although family has.

2. Passive Nature

If you make a character study of those who suffer from panic attacks, you will be surprised to observe that passive people who hardly assert themselves suffer from anxiety disorders or panic attacks. Inability to assert oneself can be an inborn trait or could be developed owing to certain unfortunate circumstances.

3. Vitamin Deficiencies

You might feel surprised to learn that vitamin deficiencies can trigger panic attacks. However, a person who lacks vitamin B is prone to anxiety disorders or panic attacks. Vitamin B deficiency also manifests as disturbances in the inner ear, hyperthyroidism, hypoglycemia, and so on. In such a case, intake of vitamin B can solve your problems of anxiety disorder or panic attack.

Cure vitamin deficiency problems, and you will automatically cure anxiety disorders and panic attacks.

4. Phobias

Irrational fears or phobias about certain things, people, or circumstances can lead to a panic attack or anxiety disorder. People might be terrified of water, elevators, fires, heights, and so on. People who never had a phobia in their life might feel that phobias are absurd. However to people suffering from them, phobias are real. These people usually end up suffering from anxiety disorders or panic attacks as well.

5. Drugs

Some drugs can actually cause panic attacks and anxiety disorders. These drugs could be either prescribed or unprescribed. Some drugs comprise chemicals that do not agree with certain individuals. Intake of such drugs will cause irritability and restlessness, two common signs of a panic attack.

The medical world offers zillions of treatment plans for the effective management of anxiety disorders and panic attacks. Therapy offers a long-term solution to these medical problems. If you find it difficult to control a panic attack, do not hesitate to seek professional help. Do some research and find out what alternative health options may be available to you as well.

Deal with your root causes of anxiety naturally. You CAN break free from your anxiety panic attacks without medication. To learn more, click here.

Anxiety

More than forty million North American adults suffer from some type of anxiety or panic, and for many, it has a very real cost to their lifestyle.

If you find yourself arguing with your partner more frequently than normal; catch yourself side-stepping social events; or perhaps even fostering unrealistic feelings of fear or apprehension there’s a good chance you are experiencing some type of anxiety disorder.

Undoubtedly, you’ve heard the term “panic attack”.  The reality is that panic attacks are real, but they are just one of many types of anxiety disorders. One myth surrounding anxiety is that having an anxiety disorder somehow makes you a bad or weak person. Everyone has had feelings of anxiousness or fear at some time or another. How a person deals with those feelings is what determines if it is ruling your life or not. For a growing percentage of society, the impact of anxiety is very real, and that only reflects cases that are reported. What is really alarming is that many adolescents and children are also affected by stress and anxiety attacks.

The body’s basic response to stress is significant in how a person protects themselves from perceived treats. It measures a person’s chances for survival when faced with danger or a potentially dangerous situation. A person can either face the stress and fight back, or retreat and take flight.

The fight or flight syndrome is a person’s reaction to stressful circumstances, even in the ordinary course of life. Such reactions or choices are inherent in your modern fight for survival. Your fight or flight reaction is stimulated the moment you are faced with a potentially dangerous situation. The smell of danger keeps the adrenaline rushing through your veins, and gets your heart beating faster. This is what makes you feel faint or weak. The strange thing is that it is your body’s way of preparing you for fight or flight! Just try running when you feel like this. You might be surprised at how fast you can run! At the fight or flight stage, you have a choice to make; you can either become aggressive and face the danger, or be passive and retreat.

Allowing yourself to become exposed to fight or flight situations regularly can be stressful and dangerous to your health. It can backlash and lead to heart ailments, migraines and soaring blood pressure, and for many it leads to social withdrawal.

However it doesn’t have to rule your life. If you or a loved one experience continuous bouts of fear, concern, or apprehension of some unknown event, now is the time to examine your lifestyle. Manage and eliminate your anxiety today.

Up until a couple of years ago, I had a lot of fears. I’m not just talking about your average worries in life, I’m talking about actual fear, being really scared. Every time I was home alone, I was scared of something bad happening; be it a break-in, fire or something more “supernatural”. When I was out walking at night I was scared of being attacked. You might think I grew up in a rough area, with a lot of violence around me, but you’d be wrong. I grew up in a small town, probably one of the safest places on earth, with a very low crime rate.

I had a lot of anxiety and panic attacks in my life from a very early age, but I never saw these other fears in relation to my anxiety. Eventually though, I was forced to make the connection. One night I was stuck in my living room for hours. I was convinced that there was someone in my house, and too scared to leave the room. I had all these images in my mind, of rapists and serial killers and men in balaclavas. I panicked. I called a friend and told him about my fear. I took him over an hour on the phone with me to convince me to leave the living room.

So why was I so scared? I finally figured it out with the help of a friend: for as long as I can remember, I loved scary stories. I would watch every cop show, every medical show, every scary movie out there. I would read Stephen King books and watch TV specials about serial killers. Every night I tuned in to the news, to find out what horrible, dangerous things where going on in the world.

What I practically did over the course of many years, was feed my mind with suggestions of potential danger “out there”. For almost every situation I found myself in, I had a scary scenario in my mind that fit it.

Maybe at this point, you think that this doesn’t apply to you, that you are not affected by what you watch and read. You might think that the fears you have are rational. It’s a dangerous world out there, right?

Is it really that dangerous? How many times have you encountered murderers, rapists, terrorists in your life? How many people do you know that have been attacked or shot at? If you really think about it, doesn’t the vast majority of the people you know or hear about live safe, peaceful lives?

We are all affected by what we surround ourselves with. Your subconscious is powerful, but it is not equipped with a button that separates fiction from reality. Even if you don’t feel scared when you watch CSI, your mind is getting suggestions about murder, rape and general violence. The information you feed your mind doesn’t just vanish when you turn off the TV or close the book. In many ways, I believe the news is one of the most powerful negative influences we have around us; the news not only scares us, it claims to tell us the “truth” . It needs to be understood that news-shows are about ratings as much as everything else on TV. There is a process of selection and sometimes construction involved in making news, and fear sells.

After the night I panicked in my own home, I decided to change things. I stopped watching anything that could scare me. I started avoiding shows and books that dealt with death and violence, no matter how interesting I might find it. I for the most part stopped watching news. I still keep up with what goes on in the world, I scan the headlines and I figure that if something is really important to be aware of, people will talk about it and I will find out that way. Gradually, over time, my fears started disappearing.

So am I never scared anymore? Well, there are still some scenarios left in my mental library that sometimes come up when I’m out walking on a dark streets, but for the most part, no, I am not scared anymore. Over the last two years, my outlook on the world has changed; I no longer live in a dangerous and hostile world. I live in a positive world, a world where it is highly unlikely that anything bad should happen to me. A world where I never hear about violence, rape and murder, simply because these tings aren’t a part of the lives of the people around me or the place where I live. Am I just being naïve? Surely bad things just don’t go away when you stop watching the news? You are right; the bad things didn’t go away, there never where any serial killers outside my house in the first place.