Article by Nathalie Fiset

What characterizes anxiety is the maladaptive fear that occurs during anxiety attacks. You might have read somewhere that anxiety is man’s basic response to various stress-provoking experiences that are directly connected with the fight-or-flight response. This mechanism usually saves man’s continuity since the early evolution.

Maladaptive fear is when the fear felt or perceived is not proportionate with the actual amount of fear being produced by the stressor. Also, it could be the unrealistic concerns involved.

For example, people who are aware and fearful that they might hit some on the road could be categorized as realistic fear. However, people who have constant fear that they could be attacked by vampires no longer have healthy minds and thus, manifest symptoms of unrealistic fear.

Also, maladaptive fear is characterized by the duration of response to anxiety stimulus. Usually, a person under the normalcy of behavior would feel that the anxiety subsides after a threat ends. But people having symptoms of anxiety disorders and attacks are incapable controlling persistent anxiety. Also, their symptoms of anxiety would extend to considerable periods of time, often until the manifested fear can no longer be connected to any apparent reasons.

Anxiety and anxiety attacks are prominent symptoms that could be associated with many psychological disorders. For example, people suffering from schizophrenia report of experiencing anxiety attacks. Or, the majority of people with serious depression also undergo series of anxiety attacks. Phobia patients and those suffering with generalized anxiety disorders could also experience anxiety attacks. In fact, it was recognized by Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis that anxiety (or neurosis) is the underlying cause of all psychopathologic disorders. It is no wonder therefore, that anxiety attacks could be observed in a wide range of mental disorders.

But how does anxiety attacks begin?

There are diverse explanations as to what causes anxiety attacks or what are the root causes. As in most cases, anxiety attacks seem to come out of the blue. However, this is not a concrete explanation since the mind could not produce internal tension on its own, unless some biological factors intervene such genetic pre-disposition of chemical imbalances in the brain.

Anxiety attacks could also be situationally predisposed. Therefore, certain situations may trigger the attacks of anxiety and sometimes, panic but it is not necessary that they will always have anxiety attacks when exposed to the same situation.

For example, a patient with anxiety attacks may feel severe dread, trembling and fear of going crazy whenever he crosses a relatively harmless chicken. (Note: Anxiety attacks and the stimuli that trigger them are commonly irrational. So having extremely uncomfortable feelings around a chicken may elicit erratic behaviors.) OR, she

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