“I noticed that my whole body was paralyzed and I had the impression that I was having a heart attack: very rapid breathing, a feeling of lack of control… My partner had to call the emergency service. He commented on my symptoms, which seemed like a heart attack, but it wasn’t a heart attack, but rather a textbook anxiety attack.”
The one who speaks this way is Laura (not her real name), a young professional with no specific health problems, who found herself involved in a long nightmare.
The medical perspective
Dr. Josep María Farré, head of the Psychiatry and Psychology Service at the Dexeus University Hospital in Barcelona, defines the issue in a simple way. “Anxiety is an emotion inherent to human beings, which becomes a serious problem when it becomes chronic.” And continue. “Anxiety is a normal, adaptive emotion, and should not have more importance, but when it becomes chronic, when it worries the patient excessively, then we find ourselves with anxiety disorders.”
Anxiety disorders can be classified into four types: simple phobia, panic disorders with and without agoraphobia, social anxiety disorders, and generalized anxiety disorder. The latter is distinguished by the fear of uncertainty and absolutely marks the behavior and future of the people who suffer from it.
Words from an affected person
“I was afraid to go to the subway, I was afraid to go shopping, I was afraid to go to the bathroom…, I was afraid to think, I was afraid to manage all the emotions
Laura relates with anguish how her daily life was affected: “I was afraid to go to the subway, I was afraid to go shopping, I was afraid to go to the bathroom…, I was afraid to think, I was afraid to manage all the emotions… It was like a bottle full of layers of different colors that would have been disordered and in which all of them would have been mixed.”
Indeed, as specialists point out, the common characteristics of all anxiety disorders are suffering due to the need for control and the tendency to worry, but there are also somatic characteristics, such as physical and psychophysiological pain, tachycardia, sweating, tremors. or difficulties breathing.
It is very common for patients who suffer from anxiety to go to the emergency room with chest pain. It is a pain that the patient explains as oppressive and that sometimes even radiates to the arm, and which corresponds to the classic and usual symptoms that most of the population knows as a heart attack.
Cascading damage
But beyond this confusing symptomatology, general medicine professionals warn about the more serious repercussions of poorly managed anxiety because an anxiety crisis can cause a series of cascading damages at the cardiovascular and metabolic levels, with unexpected or changes in cholesterol and other lipid levels.
Also in the digestive field, anxiety causes damage. There is a very significant percentage of patients with functional digestive disorders, such as dyspepsia, heavy slow digestion or abdominal distention in which there is always or almost always an anxiety component. Even in organic diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease, stress and anxiety have a huge influence to the point that they can cause or trigger outbreaks of the disease.
Treatment and therapy
The treatment of anxiety disorders, according to Farré, includes the use of antidepressants: ”We use them because they have been shown to improve anxiety and anxiety attacks. “It should be associated and complemented, without a doubt, with cognitive-behavioral therapy.”
Therapy
Treatment of anxiety disorders includes the use of antidepressants
Cognitive behavioral therapy is an educational and practical process. The patient is informed about their own disorder so that they understand it from scientific parameters and they are helped to face difficult situations, de-dramatizing them and modifying dysfunctional thoughts.
Laura’s struggle was long and constant until she found relief in therapy: “It’s like going to the gym, every day, every day…”. Healthy habits are also very important. Regular sports practice, sleeping well, eating well and having quality leisure are essential for health in general and for anxiety disorders in particular.
But, in any case, early diagnosis is very important. In all diseases it is, but in the case of anxiety these are disorders that in many cases begin in adolescence, some even in childhood.
For this reason, Laura, who has experienced it intensely, advocates for greater awareness: “I think it is time to talk naturally about anxiety, because it is still something that happens to us every day, or has happened to us, but we don’t know. Giving tools to the little ones, at school and especially in high school, would be beneficial because you have to know how to accept certain things and the mind is super important.”
And he concludes with a big smile: “I’m better now, but I’ve had a very bad time.”
#anxiety #suffocates #combat
