Stress Kills

Are you aware of Social Anxiety Disorder?

Do you sometimes suffer from anxiety attacks? In this age of financial problems, relationship issues, crime, pandemic, and other seemingly common worldwide disasters that are thrown at us daily from the TV and news, it’s no wonder many of us feel stressed out to the point of nearly breaking. This fear and anxiety of so many things in life can overwhelm some of us though, to the point of really affecting our lives on a daily basis. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Nearly 1 in 4 people now have some type of anxiety issues, even full-blown panic attacks in some cases.

Let’s face it, we live in such a fast-paced world that each day presents new challenges – our jobs demand more of our time, our family needs seem to increase as kids become overwhelmed with school and pressures of their own, and life in general is more complicated than it’s ever been in the history of the world. Of course we are blessed with technology and advancements that make life a bit easier, more choices than ever before too as far as entertainment and ways to connect with our friends and family. But stress is an inherent cost of all these modern conveniences and surely takes its toll. Many people have social anxiety disorder, and you should not have to suffer any longer.

This is perhaps the main reason why stress and anxiety have reached an epidemic proportion in this country, and elsewhere around the world. Do you suffer from any of these symptoms:

• Tightness in the chest for no apparent reason

• Feeling of helplessness, or feeling like you are drowning

• Overwhelming fear about your job, relationships, or your future

• Reliving a bad accident or event in your life over and over again

Stress is bad for us not only mentally but also physically, causing many of the heart attacks, strokes, chronic illnesses, and even obesity in our society. Too many of us suffer from headaches, high blood pressure, chronic sleeplessness, and stomach problems caused either directly or indirectly from stress. The cost to our country in medical terms is in the billions of dollars at least, from loss of productivity to health care cost increases, and mental health problems that can increase with drug and alcohol use.

The main causes of panic attacks

Many people suffer from either social anxiety or even panic attacks, and they can be quite debilitating for anyone. Imagine driving in your car and suddenly feeling your chest tighten up, your breathing become slow and difficult, almost as if you are being controlled by an outside force that is trying to kill you. This is just one of many examples of how anxiety can take over your life.

I’m sure most of you have heard of the “fight or flight” response that our bodies produce when fear takes over. This is something that has been built into our physiology for many thousands of years to protect us from danger, and is a good thing when we are actually in danger.

However, when the mind feels a threat is imminent even though it’s not a physical threat at all (such as a stressful event in your life) your body can react in the same way. Almost as if a giant tiger was about to claw you to death, your body responds with total fear! Our body is prepared for a fight to the death by releasing chemicals called adrenaline to give us energy. The part of our brain called the sympathetic nervous system is responsible for this, and completely takes over our brain during these times.

So how do we stop stress from happening?

After a brief period of time, the parasympathetic nervous system gets called into action. Its role is to return the body to a normal functioning once the perceived danger is gone. The parasympathetic system is the system we all know and love, because it returns us to a calm relaxed state.

When we engage in a coping strategy that we have learned, such as  a relaxation technique, we are in fact willing the parasympathetic nervous system into action. A good thing to remember is that this system will be brought into action at some stage whether we will it or not. The body cannot continue in an ever-increasing spiral of anxiety. It reaches a point where it simply must kick in, relaxing the body. This is one of the many built-in protection systems our bodies have for survival. All we need is to learn a technique to put this into action before the panic attack takes over.

You can do your best with worrying thoughts, keeping the sympathetic nervous system going, but eventually it stops. In time, it becomes a little smarter than us, and realizes that there really is no danger. Our bodies are incredibly intelligent—modern science is always discovering amazing patterns of intelligence that run throughout the cells of our body. Our body seems to have infinite ways of dealing with the most complicated array of functions we take for granted. Rest assured that your body’s primary goal is to keep you alive and well.

How you can learn these techniques

Many thousands of people including myself have been helped by a product called Panic Away – a system that retrains your brain to completely avoid the panic that ruled my life only a short while ago. Without going into great detail, this book is filled with techniques that guide through the process of dealing with your thoughts that lead to panic attacks, and explain how to overcome them completely.

If you visit their website at Panic Away do yourself a favor and read the many testimonials from people just like you and I that suffered from panic or anxiety attacks previously, but now lead happy and productive lives completely free from this problem.