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Fear and anxiety are close friends, and according to Mental Health UK, anxiety is actually a type of fear. While you might be familiar with some of the more common symptoms of fear, like rapid heartbeat, there are also some you may be less familiar with.
And, being able identify when you're afraid is a big step toward overcoming your fears. Although fear can be debilitating, is also serves a pretty important purpose. 'Psychologists point out that. It can be part of the fight-or-flight mechanism embedded in the lower brain, a response inherited from our remote ancestors to defend themselves from danger,' Dr.
Fear and anger have different effects upon your body. In the gastrointestinal tract, fear reduces contractions and secretions (e.g. Acid) in the upper digestive tract (stomach and duodenum), leading to nausea, fullness, and loss of appetite.
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Deepak Chopra wrote for SFGate.However, when fear lingers after the threat is over, it can trigger stress responses in the brain when you're reminded of something that brings up the emotions of a previous situation where you felt fearful. When this happens you might experience gastrointestinal distress, sweating, dizziness, dry mouth, rapid breathing, and other physical and emotional symptoms, Mental UK explained on its website. 'These things occur because, is preparing you for an emergency, so it makes your blood flow to the muscles, increases blood sugar, and gives you the mental ability to focus on the thing that your body perceives as a threat.' However, there some other surprising symptoms of fear, and understanding what they are can help you learn to manage your fears in a healthy and productive way. Remember that episode of Sex and the City where Carrie doesn't want to admit to herself that she's afraid to marry Aidan? When she tries on the wedding dress she gets hot, short of breath, and demands Miranda rip it off ASAP. Once the dress is off, Carrie is covered in angry red hives.
This is actually a symptom of fear. According to the website Hives.org, prolonged stress and anxiety can weaken your immune system and or rashes. And, these kind of hives can't be cured with medication. They'll only subside once the underlying fear or stressor is addressed. If you have to fill every single waking moment with some kind of activity, this can actually be a symptom that you're subconsciously afraid of something and you're doing everything possible to avoid it by physically exhausting yourself. If you're not sure whether your jam-packed schedule is fear based, Psych Central noted: 'Clinical psychologist Andrea Bonior, Ph.D, suggested exploring these questions: Does your busyness feel like you’re (versus running toward it)?
Do you feel anxious or uncomfortable when there isn’t a task immediately in front of you? When you end up unexpectedly having a few unstructured hours or alone time, do you automatically try to fill it with distractions (such as social media)?'
If the answer is yes, it might be time to stand still and identify what you don't want to face. You might be familiar with your hands sweating when you're feeling scared, but you might not know that fear and anxiety can also cause your hands and feet to feel cold. 'While the fight or flight response changes are active, they can cause a wide range of sensations and symptoms, including (or just cold hands, or just cold feet),' the Anxiety Centre explained on its website. 'As long as the fight or flight response is active, your cold hands and feet can persist. This is why when people are nervous, they can have cold hands and feet.' This symptom can be tricky because experiencing tingling sensations in your extremities can also be a symptom of a lot of other conditions. However, if you are unable to identify any medical cause for tingling in your arms and legs, it might be time to examine whether or not these sensations are caused by fear.
'A part of the stress response changes include shunting blood away from parts of the body less vital to survival and to parts more vital to survival,' the Anxiety Centre noted. 'This shunting action can cause a tingling, in various parts of the body when a stress response has been activated.' Feeling fearful or anxious can cause you to become overwhelmed, which can cloud your ability to think clearly, remember things, and make decisions.
In short, fear gives you brain fog. According the UW Medicine blog Right As Rain, fear basically scrambles your brain. Your body puts all of it's energy into preparing for fight or flight, and whatever you're afraid of is the only thing your body and brain are able to focus on.
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'All of the things that we think of as longer-term interests get diverted to the immediate interest:,' Daniel Evans, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, told UW Medicine. When your body and brain is in fight or flight mode, its ability to focus on anything other than keeping you safe is compromised. This means you might start slipping at work because you're not focusing on your job. If your work is suffering, and you start to forget meetings, deadlines, or you have a hard time getting to work at all because of fear-induced physical illnesses, it's time to take a look at what's holding you back. This could mean reaching out to to a therapist for help because sometimes we all have a hard time understanding why we feel a certain way, and a therapist can help you identify and work through your fear and anxiety. A lot of symptoms of fear, like staying busy, are about avoiding addressing what's making you feel afraid.
This is why many people abuse drugs and alcohol; because they're trying to avoid dealing with an underlying condition, according to Foundations Recovery Network's Dual Diagnosis program. 'They might be dealing with very real, and they might be desperate to get some relief. They might feel that drugs just help them to get through the day, and while they might not have a sophisticated understanding of why they need help, they might feel as though they’re being proactive about their dysfunction when they take drugs.' Unfortunately, self medicating can lead to addiction, and when someone who self medicates seeks help they are often given a dual diagnosis and are treated for both addiction and the underlying condition that caused them to self medicate in the first place. Other physical symptoms of fear include chronic pain, severe allergies, chronic colds and sinus infections, tense muscles, and other unexplained physical symptoms. If you're experiencing myriad symptoms of fear on the regular, Good Therapy explained on its website how working with a therapist can help you reclaim your life. 'Therapy can by helping them to understand reasons for the fear, put the fear into perspective, and set realistic expectations for the future,' God Therapy noted.'
Therapeutic strategies, such as, can often lead to a reduction in fear and may also often have the effect of empowering the person in treatment. Those who often feel fearful may find that therapy can help them transform any maladaptive behaviors into positive thoughts and actions. Additionally, a therapist may also be able to teach those affected by fear how to recognize triggers for fear as well as the skills needed for effective fear management.' While fear can be debilitating to live with, you can overcome it with help and support.
Remember, you're not alone. Everyone is afraid at one time or another, and there is no shame in asking for help.
For many people, fall is the spooky season. Daylight wanes as nights become longer, a chill touches the air, and trees lose their leaves and take on a skeletal silhouette.If that alone doesn't make you uneasy, Halloween's approach triggers an outpouring of decorations and costumes that embrace the macabre: jack-o'-lanterns with evil grins; skulls and bones; crumbling gravestones; bloodthirsty vampires; and shambling, rotted corpses lurching toward an impending.It's enough to send shivers down your spine. But why do certain things frighten us, and what can science tell us about what happens in our bodies when we're afraid? Cultural influences can lead people to be fearful of certain things, such as black cats. But there are also universal triggers of fear, according to neuropsychiatrist Dr.
Katherine Brownlowe, chief of the Division of Neurobehavioral Health at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.' Typically, those are things that are going to make you die,' Brownlowe told Live Science.' Heights, animals, lightning, spiders, somebody running after you in a dark alley — generally, people have some kind of fear response to those kinds of things,' she said. Fear factor (Image credit: Purch Creative Ops)Fear is, first and foremost, a survival mechanism. When the senses detect a source of stress that might pose a threat, the brain activates a cascade of reactions that prime us either to battle for our lives or to escape as quickly as possible — a reaction in mammals that is known as the ' response.Fear is regulated by a part of the brain within the temporal lobes known as the amygdala, Brownlowe told Live Science.
When stress activates the amygdala, it temporarily overrides conscious thought so that the body can divert all of its energy to facing the threat — whatever that might be.' The release of neurochemicals and hormones causes an increase in heart rate and breathing, shunts blood away from the intestines and sends more to the muscles, for running or fighting,' Brownlowe explained. 'It puts all the brain's attention into 'fight-or-flight.'
'Fluff, freeze, focusSome of our bodies' responses to mortal terror are throwbacks to mechanisms that served our ancient ancestors, though these responses aren't as useful to us anymore. When fear raises on our skin, it makes the hair on our arms stand up — which doesn't seem to help us either fight an enemy or escape from one. But when our early human ancestors were covered with hair, fluffing it up could have made them look bigger and more imposing, Brownlowe said.Freezing in place like a deer caught in a car's headlights is another frequent response to being scared, and Brownlowe noted that this behavior is commonly seen in animals that.' If you freeze, then the predator is less likely to see you and pay attention to you — and, hopefully, less likely to eat you,' she said.The emotional response that we feel when we're afraid serves a purpose, as well — it heightens alertness, keeping the body and brain focused on staying safe until the threat is neutralized.Even babies can be fearful of things such as loud noises, sudden movements and unfamiliar faces, and young children may be terrified of things that adults know aren't real — like a monster hiding under the bed or a boogeyman in the closet. It isn't until kids reach age 7 or so that they can differentiate between real-world threats and threats that live only in their imaginations, Brownlowe said. Facing our fearsWhat makes humans' responses to fear different from other animals' is that people can process that fear and tamp it down once they consciously understand that they are not really in danger.'
We can get startled, but instead of running away like bunny rabbits, we reassess the situation and figure out that we don't need to respond in a 'fight-or-flight' manner,' Brownlowe said. 'And then we can just get on with our day.' Some people even deliberately seek out the experience of being frightened — they watch horror movies, brave the terrifying drop of towering roller coasters and do whatever generates a feeling of immediate. According to Brownlowe, they're enjoying the chemical aftermath that follows a rush of fear — a feeling that can be euphoric.'
Once the 'fight-or-flight' signals cease, the brain releases neurotransmitters and hormones that mediate what we call the 'rest-and-digest' system,' Brownlowe said. 'The heart rate is coming down, the breathing is slowing, goose bumps are relaxing.
There's a sense of internal cognitive relief in the body, and that feels good.' The modern world comes with a number of stresses that early humans never faced and never could have imagined — financial burdens, performance anxieties, and a number of other social pressures that can generate fear and crushing anxiety. A good old-fashioned scare can make some of the we face seem less terrifying, Brownlowe added.' It gives people perspective,' she said.
'If you're anxious about talking to your boss about getting a raise and then you get the crap scared out of you, talking to your boss is no big deal.' Original article on.
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