Do You Have Panic Attacks?

Remember That You Are Not Alone.

It's true that just about everyone will experience anxiety in one form or another during the course of his or her life.  Just hearing the phone ring in the middle of the night or hearing about an impending snowstorm can cause a measure of anxiety or nervousness.

But when people talk about anxiety, they usually mean something much more severe than just a bit of nervous reaction to some unexpected event.  Full-blown disorders including panic attacks, post-traumatic stress disorder, and even obsessive-compulsive disorder are considered forms of anxiety, and entire fields of medicine are dedicated to their study.  Some people experience these symptoms so severely that they are somewhat socially crippled, unable to hold down a job, meet new people, or function outside their home at all.

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), "approximately 40 million American adults ages 18 and older, or about 18.1 percent of people in this age group in a given year, have an anxiety disorder."  They also bring out that it's not uncommon for people to suffer from more than one type of anxiety disorder – for example, someone experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder may also feel frequent panic attacks.  Obsessive compulsive disorder can also be tied to depression, and so on.

Eighteen percent of people is almost one in five, so the next time you think that you're the only one that feels the way you do or are the only one battling these symptoms, walk through the mall or think of a group of people you know, such as at work or your place of worship.  Chances are that for every five or six people there, one of them has an anxiety disorder of one type or another.  As said, entire fields of medicine are devoted to helping the sufferers of all of these types of anxiety disorders, and new medicines and other treatment options are being explored every single day.  There are just far too many people in the world today that experience these disorders for doctors and biologists to ignore it.

So if you think that there's something inherently wrong with you or that you're somehow weak because you experience severe anxiety, it's time to set that thinking aside and speak to your doctor about how he or she can help.  There are ways of coping with these symptoms and there are even cures available to you.