Why do sufferers experience Anxiety?
Anxiety develops as a result of an initial heightened anxiety experience becoming habitual. This can happen quite quickly over one or two days, or over many years, there is no set rule and no one is immune to anxiety.
Most anxiety sufferers have experienced a situation which has artificially raised their 'benchmark' anxiety level, which should return to normal, but in some cases and especially after a prolonged or repeated anxiety experience, it does not.
The more common anxiety catalysts are life experiences such as bereavement, illness, divorce or stress. Be sure to understand that these are the catalysts, not the cause of an anxiety disorder, the causes of the anxiety disorder is the way your subconscious mind has become adjusted and, this is all it is. Your inappropriate anxiety is caused solely by re-setting your benchmark anxiety level and not mental illness or something which requires medication.
Panic attacks, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and phobias are symptoms of inappropriate anxiety.
So, your 'benchmark' level of anxiety has been re-set as explained above, then:
- Panic attacks develop purely as a biological result of high levels of adrenalin caused by the inappropriate anxiety.
- OCD develops as a control mechanism for your anxiety and as a result of your mind creating anxious and creative scenarios. OCD cannot exist without anxiety and develops as a result of it. Whilst OCD seems to 'have a life of it's own', it does not, it is purely a symptom of anxiety.
- Phobias are a manifestation of our 'self preservation'. They exist in order to prevent exposure to things which cause us to experience anxiety. Phobias are inappropriate, they are caused by anxiety and yet they also produce anxiety.
As you will now understand clearly, every sensation, symptom and thought you experience whilst suffering from anxiety, is caused directly by that anxiety. Not only that, but anxiety itself is nothing more than a learned and exaggerated form of something natural and harmless. Isn't it amazing how something so simple can cause so much distress!