Anxiety is an alert system that is triggered by situations interpreted as threatening, i.e. situations that may pose a challenge, threat or loss (real or imagined). Depending on the nature of the situation, anxiety will prepare us to fight, flee or activate submissive behaviors. Psychologists Silvia Cámara and Verónica Rubio, from the Neurological Sciences Unit, explain how to act when faced with an anxiety attack.
Anxiety involves three types of aspects:
- Cognitive: negative anticipatory thoughts.
- Physiological: activation of various nerve centers, particularly the autonomic nervous system, which involves vascular and respiratory alterations.
- Motor: motor inhibition or overactivation, submission, avoidance, aggressiveness.
Each of these components can act with certain independence.
As it is an evolutionary mechanism that facilitates adaptation to the environment and the maintenance of the species, anxiety is understood as positive. In this case, we would speak of a proportionate anxiety that would manifest itself within healthy limits.
The problem comes when anxiety interferes at the social, occupational and/or family level, compromising well-being and psychological health. The severity of the symptoms will be determined by the level of suffering and degree of maladjustment to the environment.
Thus, a certain level of anxiety is normal and beneficial.
Causes of anxiety
Anxiety can be triggered both by external or situational stimuli and by stimuli internal to the person, such as thoughts, sensations and images. The type of stimulus capable of provoking the anxiety response will be determined by the idiosyncratic characteristics of the individual and his or her circumstances.
In addition, anxiety is also conditioned by predispositional factors, which are biological and constitutional variables, hereditary or not, that increase the probability that a person will develop anxiety problems when exposed to potentially activating situations. They are vulnerability factors that condition but do not determine.
Activating factors are those situations or circumstances that are capable of activating the alert system and that are interpreted as risk and threat. It is also important the process of evaluation, conscious or automatic, that the person makes on the resources with which it counts to face these situations.
Treatment of anxiety
The treatment will depend on the type of anxiety that the patient suffers. It may be situational, triggered after a traumatic experience, generalized or a disproportionate response to situations or demands of life. The type of disorder will condition the need for a combined treatment of drugs and psychotherapy, or only the latter.
It is also necessary to take into account the patient’s way of perceiving, feeling and reacting. In this way, the approach will vary according to each case.
The therapies that have demonstrated greater effectiveness are those that combine the education of the erroneous interpretation of the corporal sensations that produce the crises with respect to what happens to them when they feel anxiety.
It is important to teach the patient breathing and relaxation techniques so that they acquire tools that provide them with a sense of control.
How to act in case of an anxiety attack
It is very common for a person suffering an anxiety attack to feel or believe at that very moment that he/she is being the victim of a heart attack or that he/she is simply going to die because of the unpleasant sensation of drowning produced by hyperventilation (breathing above our needs). The most important thing for the patient to keep in mind is that when the anxiety attack or anxiety crisis occurs, it is of limited duration, and the symptoms are not life-threatening.
This thought facilitates sufficient mental unblocking for breathing techniques to be applied and for breathing to become regular again. If you do not know how to do this, it may help to breathe more slowly and deeply, for example, as if you were blowing out a candle.
You can also breathe for several minutes with a small paper bag, adjusting it to the mouth and nose, which will facilitate the recovery of the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide, producing a sense of relief. If this has not been done before, it will be convenient to go out for fresh air or simply change places, which will facilitate distraction and recovery.