Are you frequently experiencing symptoms of anxiety? Symptoms such as a racing heart, excessive sweating, headaches and nausea are common to experiences of anxiety. Anxiety affects us all and it is a natural response to fear.

Symptoms of anxiety differ for everyone and are designed to help us cope in such situations. Suffering from anxiety symptoms doesn’t necessarily make you an anxiety disorder sufferer. Put simply the stress response is the body’s natural defense.

When we experience symptoms of anxiety we are essentially experiencing the stress response. Negative emotions and feelings such as fear, anger and panic are seen and treated by the body the same way. When a person experiences a threat, the body counteracts by releasing adrenaline and other hormones.

Unfortunately the subconscious can’t tell the difference between a real threat and emotional fear. During times of danger, your stress response can assist you. For example, you’re traveling in your car, when a car speeds out in front of you. In that spilt second your brain processes the danger and in turn a chain of biological responses happen in the body.

You gain super strength, your pupils dilate and your awareness heightens. These minute reactions may help you to keep control of the car and avoid danger. When this stress response triggers, it is what is believed to be a panic attack.

Fears are unique and are different for each person, what one person might see as a threat another does not. For example, someone who suffers from social phobia may have experienced a situation where they thought that they were being ridiculed and embarrassed in public. The fear is of the same incident happening again.

Thinking about a repeat incident alone might cause symptoms of anxiety. This threat to one’s pride, ego and self esteem is acknowledged by the subconscious. The body perceives this threat in exactly the same way as it perceives a real threat and does so by releasing hormones to help prepare you for the threat.

Human biology has remained relatively unchanged over the thousands of years but our environment, has changed drastically. The days of hunting for food with spears and fending off wild predators are long gone. However, we find that our stress response is triggered often by daily stresses and anxiety.

This is believed to be one major cause of the development of anxiety disorders. This stress response has become overly sensitive in sufferers of anxiety disorders. This increases symptoms of anxiety making daily life difficult to cope with.

Symptoms of anxiety are triggered by a learned response. Because of this there are ways to unlearn it or replace bad habits with good habits.