“Anxiety is a normal emotion and most us have experience of it. Anxiety helps with vigilance, learning and general performance but in excess, it starts to work against us as extreme self-focus and apprehension reduces this attention and performance.
At the minor symptom level anxiety is familiar to virtually all of us, this often seems to weigh against an acute sufferer seeking help; or, perhaps, for an adult taking a child’s anxiety seriously. Embarrassment and shame at an ‘over reaction’, perhaps aggravated by the particular blending of emotions (such as anger, shame, guilt or sadness mixing with a dominating fear) that make up their ‘personal anxiety’ keeps the problem hidden and prevents this person, particularly if he or she is in their teens, from understanding that this response doesn’t mean they are weak, soft or immature.
Severe anxiety releases adrenaline and other chemicals into our blood, and these speed up our heart-beat, sharpen our senses and heighten our physical powers. These changes prepare us for what is called ‘flight or fight’- either to fight for our lives, or to run for them.
In anxiety disorder the body reacts in exactly the same way, and we experience the same feelings of anxiety and fear – but in situations where there is absolutely no need for ‘flight or fight’. The part of the mind that controls anxiety has, to all intents and purposes, lost all sense of proportion, and screams `danger!’ when the situation is not threatening in any rational way. No matter how harmless the feared creature/situation may be, for a severely anxious person the fear reaction is every bit as real as if the cause was a major threat. People with phobias usually realise all too well that their reaction is irrational, but this makes no difference to its effect.