Anxiety is Both Emotional and Physical

Anxiety is felt by almost everyone at some time or the other and it involves a multifaceted mixture of emotions consisting of fear, apprehension as well as worry and very often there is accompanying physical sensations such as palpitations, nausea, chest pain as well as shortness of breath. Doctors say that anxiety is in many cases considered to be cognitive, somatic, and emotional and has several behavioral mechanisms. To begin with, the cognitive mechanism implies that the patient expects or has a vague feeling of imminent danger.

Somatic

In the case of somatic anxiety, the body makes organism physically ready to cope with a threat, known as an emergency response. This response is where blood pressure as well as heart rates increases.  Additionally, there is increased sweating and additional blood flow to the key muscle groups. On the outside, somatic signs may appear in the form of paleness of skin, sweating, trembling as well as dilation of the pupils.

Emotional or Behavioral

In the case of emotional anxiety, the person feels a sense of foreboding or panic and is physically afflicted with nausea as well as cold chills. In the case of behavioral anxiety, which may either be voluntary or involuntary, it may cause the person to attempt to flee or avoid the source of anxiety. A further indication is when such behaviors are recurrent and also maladaptive, which are evidence of the most extreme types of disorders. This does not however, mean that anxiety is always maladaptive or pathological. It is a normal emotion that coexists with fear, anger, sadness and happiness and plays a vital role in the survival of the both people and higher mammals.

From a medical point of view, anxiety is thought to be caused by neural circuitry that involves amygdala as well as hippocampus. When you are confronted with stimuli that are neither pleasant nor harmless, such as foul smells or rancid tastes, or if there is a sound or situation that you perceive to by physically threatening,  there is an increased flow of the blood in the amygdala. It may result in moderate levels of anxiety and this indicates that it is a mechanism that protects in order to prevent the organism from taking part in potentially detrimental behaviors such as eating food that is rotten.

A person’s life may be seriously affected when he or she has continually recurring episodes of anxiety and this can be clinically diagnosed. The most common of these disorders are generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorders, social anxiety disorders, phobias, obsessive compulsive disorders as well as post-traumatic stress disorders.