subject: Anxiety Attacks And Their Triggers [print this page] An anxiety attack will normally have a trigger that sets it off. And, usually this trigger is emotionally based. So, emotions play quite a large role in anxiety.
Usually, the first anxiety attack that someone ever experiences is a reaction to some kind of stressful event that occurs in their life.
For instance, the triggering event could be a very negative and scary happening that occurs the first time that a kid goes swimming in the lake. Or, maybe as a person is driving, the first time he takes control of the wheel a horrendous car wreck occurs. In the first instance, the person may develop an abnormal anxiety when he is around large expanses of water. In the second case, the person may carry an anxiety around with him whenever he is inside of a car. In both cases, future attacks of anxiety are triggered by subconscious or conscious memories of those first traumatic experiences.
Quite a few times the external signs of stress be things such as extreme perspiring, trembling of the hand, shallow breathing, or something similar. A person's inability to control his emotions can lead to him manifesting physical symptoms. But, even if the symptoms are not outwardly manifested, it doesn't mean that the person is unaffected. Many times the symptoms are things such as high blood pressure or migraine headaches, neither of which can be identified by observational behaviour alone.
Some of the more recent researching of the brain and brain chemicals have concluded that chemical asymmetries or abnormalities in the body may play a much stronger role than previously believed in putting a person at risk for anxiety attacks. The fact that many prescription drugs such as benzodiazepines have been so effective in combating anxiety attacks, lends further credence to this viewpoint.
How you feel can have a great effect on your body's chemistry. Researchers have known this for years. Therefore, it is not much of a stretch to recognize the reverse, that a change in the body chemistry can affect anxiety levels.
These days, by far the most common way that physicians handle anxiety disorders is to give the patient one or more prescription drugs. This is usually because drugs are an easy solution to what may be a more complex problem. In addition, an easy fix like drugs is often welcomed by the patient as well.
The genuine cure, or at least effective treatment, however, may simply be identifying accurately the triggers that caused the original attacks and work towards understanding those those triggers. This, obviously, is harder to do as it involves effectively bringing up perhaps long forgotten memories in the patient that are the keys to the cause of their anxieties. But, in the long run, this is probably a more effective long term and permanent solution.
