Anxiety, What is anxiety? Acupuncture and anxiety.
· Anxiety is part of a natural human reaction that involves mind and body.
· Sensations of anxiety serve as an important basic survival function that is activated whenever we perceive danger or threat.
· These sensations are a natural part of the body's “fight and flight response”.
· They are caused by the flow of adrenaline and other chemicals that prepare the body to make a quick getaway from danger.
· Acupuncture treatment of anxiety it is able to affect the natural balance of hormones and chemicals in the brain.
· This reduces the symptoms of anxiety and helps to regain a sense of balance and wellbeing.
It is normal for most people to experience heightened feelings of anxiety when faced with new, unfamiliar, or challenging situations such as an exam or an important event.
While fear is the emotion we feel in the presence of an actual threat, anxiety is a less definable sense of anticipated danger or trouble. It is common for those with anxiety to not know what's causing the emotions, worries, and sensations they experience.
Often an anxiety condition will involve excessive amounts of anxiety, fear, nervousness, worry, or dread, with physical sensations, such as an increase in heartbeat and breathing, tense muscles, moist palms, a queasy stomach, headache and trembling hands or legs.
Anxiety that is persistent or too intense can cause a person to feel preoccupied, distracted, tense, and always on alert. Anxiety disorders are very common and symptoms can vary. They can affect people of all ages including adults, children, and people in their teens.
Anxiety which occurs too often and is too strong, is and is out of proportion to the present situation can have a negative impact on a person's daily life and happiness.
Acupuncture helps to regulate the parasympathetic nervous pathways of the “fight and flight response”. The source of control of the flight and fight response is the Limbic system in the Brain. The fight-flight, automatic emotional memory response of the amygdala happens instantly when a person senses a threat. It takes a little longer for the thinking part of the brain (the cortex) to process the situation and evaluate whether the threat is real, and if so, how to handle it. If the cortex sends the all-clear signal, the fight-flight response is deactivated and the nervous system can relax. However, this does not always happen! This is often where the problem of uncontrolled anxiety stems The cortex is unable to send the all clear signal, or the all clear signal is ignored, overridden by the automatic amgydala response. This creates a situation of uncontrolled anxiety often beyond the conscious control of the individual. When this happens on a regular basis, over a long period of time, the mind - body connection forms an almost permanent anxiety response often to situations which do not require such a response.
Mindfulness meditaion is a very positive support to acupuncture treatments. Daily meditation practice, especially mindfulness meditation, will help you to calmly cope with the 'triggers' which may be stimulating the anxiety.
The greatest problem with anxiety is the fact that we often do not notice what the cause is. Meditation creates this self reflective attitude which will allow us to notice the triggers. Once you begin to see what it is, a thought , a feeling a sensation , that is the trigger to your anxiety then you can begin to diffuse the situations as they arise and so deminish the effect and frequency of the anxiety.
• General anxiety.
With this common anxiety condition a person worries excessively about many things. Someone with generalized anxiety may worry excessively about school, the health or safety of family members, and the future. They may always think of the worst that could happen.
Along with the worry and dread, people with generalized anxiety have physical symptoms, such as chest pain, headache, tiredness, tight muscles, stomach ache or vomiting. Generalized anxiety can lead a person to miss school or avoid social activities. With generalized anxiety, worries can feel like a burden, making life feel overwhelming or out of control.
• Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).
For a person with OCD, anxiety takes the form of obsessions (bad thoughts) and compulsions (actions that try to relieve anxiety).
• Phobias.
These are intense fears of specific situations or things that are not actually dangerous, such as heights, dogs, or flying in an airplane. Phobias usually cause people to avoid the things they are afraid of.
• Social phobia (social anxiety).
This intense anxiety is triggered by social situations or speaking in front of others. An extreme form called selective mutism causes some children or teenagers to be too fearful to talk at all in certain situations.
• Panic attacks.
These episodes of anxiety can occur for no apparent reason. With a panic attack, a person has sudden and intense physical symptoms that can include a pounding heart, shortness of breath, dizziness, numbness, or tingling feelings causes by over activity of the body's normal fear response. Agoraphobia is an intense fear of panic attacks that causes a person to avoid going anywhere a panic attack could possibly occur.
• Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
This results from a traumatic past experience. Symptoms include flashbacks, nightmares, or constant fear after the event