Most of us have had a panic attack sometime in our life, before a public speech, before/while asking out a girl you really like for the first time, before an important test or during an intense moment of fear. And this blog is all about me and what i had and experiencing. I realized now, that im 27 years old, that, what I was experiencing while I was still in high school was an Anxiety Disorder.

It started when I get conscious of my clothing before I go to school. I can’t leave the house because I always get tense every time Im going to school. This resulted me stomach ache (feeling that I need to go to restroom, always!), I can’t finish my breakfast and sometimes I don’t want to go to school because of the feeling ti will be going to restroom always. All of these things happened to me and it all started there.

I thought, it will disappear when i get old or when I go into college. But it’s not! When i was in college, I’m not a typical student who stayed in boarding house and will just go home during weekend. I preferred staying at home and I didn’t bother to wake up 3 or 4 in the morning everyday when going to school. But most of those days, before going to school, it’s the same feeling I had when I was in High School. And it didn’t stop there! After college graduation, I got a work right away and doing house and office routine everyday. Same old routine i had when i was in college. But got lessen this time because I’m not thinking that i may get late or something.

My first panic attacks is when I felt something in my heart. I had heart palpitation while jumpstarting our Van far from home. That time, i had lack of sleep because I worked at night and because of long driving. It all started day after that. My mind keep on thinking and feeling my heart if its still racing. I even get fever day after that and went to a doctor for check ups. The Doctor diagnosed that I have High Blood Pressure but i doubt. Because I know my behavior changed when Im in front of a Doctor. The Doctor gave me Vitamins for the heart and anti-blood clotting. But I did not take that. Because my Girlfriend is a nurse, i asked her to give me a Blood Pressure test after my checkup and it was NORMAL! See? What a thinking..

I noticed to myself, panic attacks happens to me when:

1) Tense. When going to somewhere else. School, Event, Office, Activity
What I have in mind:
a) What if im going to be late?
b) What if i need to pee while in bus?
c) What if i need to go to a restroom?
2) Need to perform infront of others.
What I have in mind:
a) Am I ready?
b) How do I look?
c) What if i make mistake while perfoming?
3) Health Problem
What I have in mind:
a) Am I sick?
b) What if there’s something wrong with me?
c) What if.. So many what if…

All of this thinking lead me to a conclusion that there’s something wrong the way I’m thinking. And while searching the net for possible cause of heart palpitation, it lead me to Anxiety Disorder. I have found some info about Anxiety Disorder and tried to understand what it is. Read some information below about Anxiety and Anxiety Disorder and it could help you in some way just like on how it helped me.

What Is Anxiety?

Anxiety is one of our many emotions which everyone has, it’s a natural protection mechanism that our bodies trigger in situations of danger, fear or threat.Anxiety occurs in two different stages and leads to several different symptoms. Let me go into them:

Psychological: The first stage of the whole anxiety process begins by perceiving fear, danger or threat.We start analyzing and asking ourselves questions like: “What will I do if she rejects or doesn’t like me?”, “What happens if she thinks I’m an idiot?”.All these questions build up in your head and it starts having effects on your system which leads to the physical stage.

Physical: Once our body notices our mind is in fear, the only thing it can do is provide you with extra energy as a way of protection so you can fight the threatening person/object or run away from it.How does it provide us with extra energy?

* Large amounts of adrenaline are pumped into your body to put you in a state of increased alertness.
* Blood is redirected away from the extremities and onto the large muscles of the body.
* The heart starts working harder (raising your bpm) to move the blood to the large muscle groups as fast as it can.
* It increases your respiratory and metabolic rate.
* It releases red blood cells and sugar from the liver.

All this natural self survival protection was great back in the day when we were hunters or primitive tribal members and had to fight wild animals or other tribes, but in modern times it only causes a very uncomfortable feeling and many side effects (symptoms).

Symptoms: As the body is creating all this extra energy, it expects you to use it in some way, the only problem is you can’t fight (without getting arrested) or run away (without looking like a complete idiot) from a girl.As a consequence we end up with all this energy that manifests itself in several different ways:

* Chest pain
* Dizziness
* Heart palpitations
* Difficulty breathing
* Sweating
* Choking sensations
* Chills
* Tingling
* Hot flashes
* Abdominal distress
* Feelings of unreality / derealization / depersonalization.
* Trembling/Shaking

As a result of so much energy going unused, the body starts to store it as tension into your muscles, over along time this tension gives you the feeling of being on the edge and never being able to relax causing sleeping problems.As the the tension builds up more and more you will feel overwhelmed by it all and very uncomfortable, everyday seems like a long 24 hour torture and that’s when you are classified as having an Anxiety Disorder.

Types Of Anxiety

There are four main forms of anxieties, GAD (General Anxiety Disorder), Situational Anxiety, Anticipatory Anxiety and Post Situational Anxiety.Lets look into them a bit more below.

General Anxiety Disorder: GAD also known as Free-Floating Anxiety is distinguished from a phobia as it is not connected to any particular object or situation like the others, it appears out of no where.

Anticipatory Anxiety: People who over think a lot (like me) tend to be the ones most prone to this type, it happens when you experience high levels of anxiety merely by thinking about a situation or event that you fear.This type of anxiety can also become very problematic as you can get caught up in this state for weeks on end, worrying excessively about an event that is a long long way in the future.

Situational Anxiety: This type of anxiety is different from your usual everyday fear anxiety and only comes when your exposed to a specific situation.The more you try and avoid the situation the more it becomes a “phobia”.

Post Situational Anxiety: Sometimes you get anxiety after the event or situation you feared has passed or been avoided.Similar to the anticipatory anxiety, you can end up worrying for a long time after the situation has occurred, over thinking your performance and methods you could of used to improve it and what others might have thought of you.After this happens you find yourself worrying about bumping into that girl once more, or experiencing the situation you feared all over again and you start entering the vicious circle of anticipatory - post situational - anticipatory…..

I hope this article has helped you learn a bit more about anxiety and what it is all about, remember anxiety is a very common thing that affects both genders and all ages, your definitely not alone in it.Although you can use medication for it, there’s plenty of other more healthier options to overcome your anxiety that you can find in my treating anxiety article:).

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Self-Diagnosed: Anxiety Disorder