When we get a tremendous scare, or are victims of a very intense threat, we all understand that the body experiences, “corporalizes” a series of sensations, no less unpleasant because they are known: hyperventilation, palpitations, sweating, trembling, etc.
In these cases the fear is instantaneous, but not “irrational.” The mind connects all those unpleasant sensations with something “real” that has happened and we know that, with a little time, the body will end up regulating itself, that is, the sensations pass.
Then psychologists will explain more technically that when faced with the threat of danger, the limbic system, responsible for the management of emotions (and fear is one of the basic emotions in human beings) will temporarily cut off communication with the cortex and activate the cortisol route, a hormone that regulates the reaction to stress, which will generate the production of adrenaline and norepinephrine, the heart will suddenly increase its beat rate to have more blood and the respiratory system will also increase its rate by hyperventilating to increase production of oxygen, both necessary for the “fly or fight” response, fight or flight, typical of a moment of threat or danger.
Besides, Many other responses will be triggered equally in this fight or flight process.: the blood will concentrate in specific areas, leaving others less irrigated, with the consequent sensation of numbness, chills, sweat, etc… The pupils will dilate to have peripheral vision… in short, a wide variety of physiological responses essential for the act of “fight or flight” always present in a scenario of fear.
Up to this point, we all understand and no one calls “anxiety” the activation of unpleasant sensations that in another context we do call “anxiety”, which overwhelms us and terrifies us. Why is the activation of our nervous system, necessary as we have seen in a moment of danger/fear, apparently “pathological” in other contexts?
What happens when these sensations: palpitations, choking, chills, sweating, trembling, dizziness… appear when you least expect it? At home sitting on the couch, in class, at work, when crossing a bridge…
Sometimes, the trigger for activation is the connection of the place, person or event with previous traumatic experiences in our life.. That is to say, if I have suffered mobing or bullying and it has generated anxiety in me, the mere fact of returning one day to the place where I experienced it or to a place that reminds me of it, can cause the limbic system to trigger cortisol, thus initiating the response. in dangerous situations, as if the traumatic event were really happening again. This, although with more difficulty, is also in some way susceptible to being understood with a certain normality by our rational mind.
But There are many occasions in which the aforementioned sensations appear without an apparent trigger., neither current nor remote in time. They simply appear unexpectedly, and on these occasions without knowing why we feel that our heart is racing, that we are short of breath, that we are sweating profusely or shaking uncontrollably.
In these very, very common cases, the mind panics. Panic in the face of sensations that we cannot control and to which we cannot attribute either a specific origin or duration, and when the mind loses the ability to control and understand what lives in the body, it panics.
And of course, panic in this case is not the response to something that happens outside of us, but paradoxically, what is generating panic and fear in us are the body’s own reactions of panic and fear, as we have described above. principle.
They are the same sensations, only now we do not know the cause or why and we cannot control them, and in order to let them happen and pass away, (as we do in cases in which something external to us generates fear in a way punctual), overwhelm us, terrifying us, and we begin an endless chain in which the fear itself of the reactions of fear only increases the intensity of those sensations, trapping us in a vicious circle of fear, more sensations, more fear, more sensations… until we reach the crisis, the panic attack, which in its paroxysm, at the extreme of its intensity, will end up exhausting the energy of the system and we will fall exhausted.
This paroxysm normally does not last more than a few minutes, but it is terrifying and sometimes ends in a hospital emergency.
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Why does this occur?
Let’s imagine that we are in a moment of life of intense personal, work or emotional stress., and let’s also imagine that our quality of sleep is broken. This will cause our system to remain on alert/alarm for much longer than usual and will also prevent adequate rest. It is as if we have the engine of our brain over-revving and we never have time to take it to the workshop (rest).
Eventually, the system will run out, the battery will wear out and that is when the body (our own nervous system) activates the survival response that will trigger sensations very similar to those we feel in a moment of alert/fear.
That is, it is as if our system had a safety relay, a threshold, from which “warns” us through unpleasant physiological sensations that we have entered a risk zone, that the energies of our system are running out and that, therefore, we need a long and well-deserved rest. In this case, the feelings of anxiety or fear are not the product of a specific and easily identifiable event, but rather the breakdown of the system due to exhaustion.
If we understand this, the response should be the same as when we get a tremendous scare, we should let the system settle down and calm down again. That is why at Vitaliza we give great importance to this psycho-education.to this understanding that what is happening, which, although surprising, overwhelming and terrifying, is still “normal”, that is, it has an origin and an explanation.
Once the cause is understood, we try to regulate the physiological state of anxiety as quickly and pragmatically as possible, generally through work with biofeedback, especially cardiac coherence and neurofeedback, while developing anxiety management tools such as the Group therapeutic mindfulness. This, of course, without forgetting the necessary psychotherapeutic support that delves into and attempts to resolve the deep psychological causes that led to the breakdown of the system and the appearance of anxiety symptoms.
Author: Javier Elcarte, psychologist expert in trauma, director of Vitaliza.
