What Does an Anxiety Attack Feel Like?
Believe it or not, over 20 million individuals in America alone suffer from anxiety attacks, but many more are living with this condition and don’t even know it. In fact, anxiety attacks are one of the most commonly mis-diagnosed health conditions within healthcare.
What does an anxiety attack feel like? This article will cover the most common symptoms associated with an anxiety attack, how to tell the difference between this condition and other conditions that mimic it, as well as the most effective treatments for anxiety attacks.
Before we discuss what an anxiety attack feels like, though, we first need to briefly discuss what happens with this condition so the symptoms and treatments make sense.
Within healthcare, an anxiety attack is actually classified as a psychological condition. But this is actually not completely the case, because this condition is actually more of a problem with the nervous system than it is mental.
Stress is the most common trigger, but anxiety attacks actually occur due to how the individual’s nervous system responds to that stress.
Basically, a person who suffers with anxiety attacks experiences a much more intense reaction to what would make most of us nervous. In order to understand this, we need to first have an understanding of the parts of the nervous system that are involved when we experience stress.
They are called the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS). Instead of making this boring like a text book, let me tell you a story to explain how this works.
Let’s say that a bear walks in the room as you’re reading this article. Your brain will perceive the bear as stress, because it threatens your life (and I don’t know about you, but I’m a little on the chubby side, so I’d make a pretty good meal for that bear).
Your brain is hard-wired to survive, so at this moment, it has to make a decision – do you run from the bear or fight it? Either way, the body needs to be prepared for this extra activity, so your brain will turn on the Sympathetic Nervous System.
This part of your nervous system prepares your body to either fight or flee – so your blood pressure raises (you need lots of oxygen to the muscles so they can make you run fast or fight), your heart rate beats faster, you breathe more deeply, and many other things.
Once the bear is gone, the brain turns on the other part of the nervous system that I mentioned (the Parasympathetic Nervous System), which does the opposite – it calms you down.
When a person suffers with anxiety attacks, this reaction is intensified – so, their may only be 1 bear in the room, but your brain thinks there’s actually 5 bears. This is where the problem occurs.
So, with that said, what does an anxiety attack feel like? Well, the symptoms of an anxiety attack are different for each individual, and they can be experienced to different degrees.
Some individuals will have very minor anxiety attacks, so may not even realize what is occurring. Others have full-blown, very intense attacks that make them believe they may be dying.
Either way, the most serious symptoms of an anxiety attack include:
- Speeding heart rate (a feeling like your heart is beating so fast or intensely that it may jump out of your chest).
- Profuse sweating
- Chest pain (more like a tightness in the chest)
- Difficulty breathing
- Paranoia
- Nervousness
- A jittery feeling (like you have rushes of adrenaline)
- A feeling of impending doom (as though you’re going to die)
- Fears of all sorts (fears of small spaces, large groups of people, being social, etc.)
- A feeling that the room is closing in on you
- Among others
I know these symptoms sound horrible, but please realize that not everyone experiences all of these symptoms, and some may experience them to a much smaller degree.
If you notice, some of these symptoms also occur with heart conditions. So how can you know that your heart isn’t involved? And what should you do if one of your symptoms is chest pain?
To begin with, let me just say that chest pain of any type should be evaluated by a qualified doctor to rule out the possibility of a more serious health condition. With that said, are there certain ways you can tell if your chest pain is being caused by an anxiety attack rather than a heart condition?
In general, the type of chest pain you will feel with a heart condition is more like someone is sitting on your chest. Physicians describe this as a “crushing” sensation.
Chest pain from an anxiety attack is usually described as a “tense” or “tight” feeling in the chest. Sometimes, the tightness in the chest will also be accompanied by a feeling that your heart is beating really intensely and fast, or like your heart is about to leap out of your chest.
Problems with the heart will also often lead to radiating symptoms. What that means is that you may also experience traveling pain or other sensations in your arm (usually the left arm), jaw, upper back, or neck. This isn’t the case every time, but it is very typical with heart problems, but not usually with anxiety attacks.
No matter how severe your symptoms are, the good news is that anxiety attacks are not a death sentence. There are actually a number of very helpful treatments for panic attacks, and many of them are natural.
Most doctors will prescribe medications for this condition, but these medications can have negative side effects. In fact, some of the most common side effects of Psychotropic drugs (the drugs used for this condition) are insomnia, restlessness, headaches, nausea, sexual problems, fatigue and memory loss.
Believe it or not, the most effective treatment I’ve found for eliminating the symptoms of anxiety attacks is a simple exercise you can do without the help of a doctor, called the Linden Method.
This method is simple, doesn’t take a lot of time, and produces instant results in most cases. This is, by far, the fastest way to reduce the symptoms of an anxiety attack.
There isn’t enough room in this article to teach you this method in detail, but if you would like to learn the Linden Method you can click here (What Does an Anxiety Attack feel like?) for all the details.
