The majority of experts mark out three basic forms of obsessional or obsessive-compulsive neurosis revealed as phobic, obsessive and compulsive syndromes. At the same time, phobias are understood as obsessive fears; under the notion of obsessions are understood compulsive thoughts such as obsessive counting, obsessive doubts, remembrances, inclinations, and attractions; compulsive syndrome includes obsessive actions, for example, tapping with a pencil on a table during conversation, tics, rituals and so forth.

It is considered that the regular studying of phobias began in 1871 when Westphal described the agoraphobia. He has specified that phobias emerge in the human consciousness against his will at an otherwise intact intelligence and cannot be intentionally “expelled” from the consciousness. The term “phobia” comes from Greek “phobos” and is translated fear, horror. Definitions of the notion “phobia” are extremely various. Some authors define phobias as a very painful experience of the fear caused by various objects and the phenomena. Other experts affirm that the phobia is the fear connected to certain situation or group of ideas and this fear does not arise in their absence. Original definition of phobia is that this condition represents a persistently existing irrational fear, which results in deliberate avoiding of specific object, activity or a situation causing this fear.

Generalizing the definitions of phobias, it is possible to pick out the following diagnostic criteria: obsessive character of the fear, clearness of the plot, intensity and persistence of the course, preservation of the critical attitude of the patient to his or her condition. Doctors, practicing the psychoanalytical approach, emphasize the irrational character of fear, its groundlessness and illogicality, paying attention to the fact that the reason that caused the formation of phobia is frequently displaced from the patient’s consciousness.

Phobic syndrome is a frequent finding in the in clinical picture of many mental disorders. Most frequently phobias accompany various forms of neurosises. Traditionally phobias are described within the framework of obsessive-compulsive neurosis alongside with obsessive thoughts, ideas, inclinations and actions). Among particular forms of neurosises with the predominance in their clinical picture of fear some authors mark out anxiety neurosis, expectation neurosis, and fright neurosis or affective shock neurosis.

To get rid of these symptoms through alternative medicines –

The modern medicines that are prescribed by the doctors have many side-effects and in the long run do more harm than good. On the other hand the alternative medicines are much more effective and don’t leave any side-effects behind. They are very safe to use. The herbal medicines for anxiety and depression are very effective. They nourish the nervous systems and calm the mind and they also relax the body so that there is not much reaction to stress and strain. Though they take time to have effect and are not so effective immediately, they work by supporting the nervous system and in due course of time anxiety and stress.

Using natural therapies to reduce stress and anxiety –

You can find many types of natural therapies to treat anxiety and stress. These therapies give you balance in life in both mental and physical level. You can use the natural therapy you yourself. For example you can use the deep breathing exercises of yoga to reduce your stress or anxiety. You can learn these deep breathing exercises by yourself at home and do them without any problem. You will find that these exercising reduce your mental stress and bring calm to your minds.

Acupuncture fir reducing anxiety –

You also have the option of using acupuncture to reduce anxiety. It is possible to use acupuncture for dealing with depression related issues. Acupuncture can be used to treat anxiety. Liver plays an important part in the body in distributing important energy resources. If all the energy resources are not distributed properly than there will be lack of energy and this lack of energy will later on lead to depression. These are the stress symptoms and will lead to many problems. So through acupuncture the region of energy deficiency is targeted and energy is brought top that region of the body. If you practice mind and body exercises from tai chi, yoga and qi gong along with standard acupuncture treatments there will be marked improvement in curing depression more quickly.

How does acupuncture work? –

Acupuncture makes use of hair thin needles on the body. Acupressure is another method in which the main points are pressed. It is believed that there are points in our hands and feet that goes straight to different nerves of the body. By pressing the relevant points, the symptoms related to that point goes away.

With the help f these alternative medicines you can get over your anxiety and depression symptoms that too without any side effects. They are gaining popularity so why not try it once.

Eugène Delacroix
French painter.

There exist various ways and approaches to therapy for panic attacks.

Medications in the therapy for panic attacks

Physicians say that medications in the therapy for panic attacks might be especially helpful for those affected persons whose fright blocks the everyday activities. Among usually advocated medicaments are antidepressant drugs and benzodiazepines. Antidepressants are efficient in decreasing signs of desperation and the clinical presentation of dread. The benzodiazepines function rapidly and effectively to contain affright and panic preparing sufferers feel tranquil and become unstrained. They are also able to lessen muscular strain and agitation.

New approaches to therapy for panic attacks

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is another answer to the question “What to take for anxiety and panic attacks?” This technique for individuals experiencing dread upsets allows for obviating the use of medications. People who participate in this variety of therapy learn to recognise and alter their thoughts and behaviours that can lead to worrisome sensations.

Smart ways of therapy for panic attacks

Medical practitioners suggest that anxiousness should not be an essential component of our everyday existence. They insist on assaying natural smart ways of therapy for panic attacks to help people experiencing dread. Among right means to help patients with fright is strain reducing. Doctors substantiate that strain is the gravest cause of anxiety. The sufferers from fear had better identify their stressors to manage them efficaciously. Medical professionals advocate reducing tension by several typical manners to help angst. One of them is doing single thing at a time. Physicians also insist on regular exercise, proper breathing, sound sleep and relaxing meditation. All these measures help contend with the annihilating thinking that might result in angst. Good and healthy nutrition is basal for mental wellbeing. Taking into account doctor’s nourishment advice could become one of the natural means to help fright. Sufferers must consume the green tea, fish-liver oil, protein nutrients, and multivitamins. They must struggle with caffeine, alcoholic beverages, and processed sugar.

Alternative approaches to therapy for panic attacks

Marvellous herbal curatives, such as passionflower, valerian root, chamomile, verbena, Citrus lemon balm, can be prescribed to combat with anxiousness. Some medical professionals believe that natural homeopathic medications are able to help in angst. Among natural therapies to heal the angst are acupuncture, hypnotherapy, colour and crystal therapies. They decompress and calm individuals doctoring the brain and increasing energy levels. Aromatherapy is one of the smart means to help in fright. It supposes utilising the plant essential oils and bringing them to massage oil and bathroom water. The reservoirs of distinguished oils are Citrus bergamia, lavender, jasmine, sandalwood, rose, and cypress tree. Flowers constitute a supplemental curing system that is set on the flower essences. This approach proposes strong and stable mental and emotional improvement. Among these natural healers are essences of red chestnut trees, cherry, plum, and mustard flower. These flower essences help ease excitation, thwarting, and restlessness.

What is the scientific explanation for causes of panic attack?

Inheritance and behavioural components

Some investigators consider that hereditary patterns can be a predisposing element among the causes of panic attack. They likewise draw attention to an overly modest attitude to the human relations as well as strain and tension. Medical specialists affirm that particular conditions, such as phobic disorders, may become the causes of panic attack and induce this attack in various forms. Substantial life modifications might as well be a provocative element. Shunning of the vexing situations and subdued feelings may act as supporting and maintaining agents of fear. Medical practitioners observed that individuals who are ill with fear attacks frequently act passively with other people. In spite of the condition that this behaviour may be delicate and honorific, at the same time it is not emphatic. The deficiency of self-assertiveness may become one of the causes of panic attack.

Medications as one of the causes of panic attack

Sometimes one of the causes of panic attack and fear affects might be the side effect of antidepressant drugs that can raise anxiety at the onset of cure with them. Some stimulants, such as caffeine or nicotine, can provoke or bring about fright. Alcoholic beverage and benzodiazepine withdrawal syndromes might also become grounds of fright attacks.

Existential explanation for causes of panic attack

Some philosophers and specialists in psychological science explain causes of dread affections from existential standpoint speaking of trial-and-error fear and anxiety. They relate anxiousness to the dizziness of freedom and suppose that the fear can be positively resolved through the self-aware practice of responsibility and freedom of choice. They regard the existential anxiousness as the condition when an individual realizes the possibility of his or her nonbeing. Individuals ask themselves questions about such notions as fate and death, guilt and disapprobation, vanity and meaninglessness of life. Philosophers say that when people come across with the greatest perils for their life and when the decease is nearby, the most consequential of all human desires is to discover the significance of life to contend against the psychic trauma of nonbeing.

What are anxiety and panic attack?

Caregivers say that anxiety is a reaction that comprises perceptive, moody, physical, and behavioural elements. These factors combine with each other contributing to the picture of anxiety and panic attack with disagreeable sensations linked to psychological and corporal frustration, apprehension and worry. Caregivers say that awe within healthy limits is a normal reaction to the conditions caused by physical or emotional tension. It can help manage with hard situations occurring in life. In this context psychologists describe the test concern. The test dread is an expectation of something mortifying experienced by pupils who are afraid to fail at examination. Diaphoresis, pathological disarray, concerns, heart palpitations, sickness, uneasiness, and worry are symptoms of this condition.

Clinical demonstration of anxiety and panic attack

Anxiety and panic attack come about without any challenging factor. This distinguishes them from usual fear, which comes about when the threat is objective. Anxiety is the outcome of terrors that persons regard to be unmanageable and inevitable. Signs and clinical picture of anxiety constitute fatigue, vexations, heart palpitations, and breast painful sensations, shortness of breath, sickness, and abdominal aches. Blood pressure, heart rate, and sweating are increased, but defensive immune and digestive systems are repressed. There are likewise moody clinical signs such as feelings of dread, disorders in concentrating, tenseness, anticipating the worst, irritability, fidget, and waiting for peril. Affected individuals suffering from anxiety and panic attack suddenly feel pressure in the chest. The heart gets to beat faster and the breathing is quicker. The martyrs are sweating, and it appears to them that everything is getting bad. These are signs and clinical picture of anxiety and typical features of fright. Nevertheless, doctors assert that these states are not an adequate reaction to danger, which is usually imaginative.  Anxiety and panic attack can also give rise to the generalized anxiety disorder. This is the sharpest degree of dread and concern about everyday life. Sufferers are incessantly expecting cataclysms and are unable put an end to concerning about wellness, money, family, study or school. Their existence becomes a persisting state of care and threat. The anxiousness rules the thoughts of these people and intervenes with familiar duties such as work, scholarship, social life and human relationships.

Preventive measures to get over anxiety

The best mode how to get over anxiety is to keep it from coming along. Sufferers must understand some remedial approaches that can aid them to terminate anxiety attacks. To foreclose fear affects it is crucial to be familiar with the methods of fighting with tension and practice regular relaxation. The individuals wanting to get over anxiety should also know the acceptable ways to command their respiration and ventilation. Everyday exercise is an extremely important component to prevent potential anxiety attacks. Medical practitioners advise to make a break in the everyday activity if the patients are excessively worn out or it is difficult for them to execute their common obligations. Physicians also urge on eliminating the stimulators of the nervous system. It is acknowledged that the drinks comprising caffeine, such as tea or coffee, could evoke a real anxiety. The people should also be aware of their anxious thoughts, feelings and emotions that may stir attacks needing to get over anxiety.

How to contain fear and get over anxiety?

In case of severe fear, people should know and understand how to get over anxiety and terminate fear attacks. The affected persons must be conscious of the reasons and the triggering elements that lead to the fits of these affective bursts so as they recognized how to preclude anxiety. If the attack takes place, it is fundamental to use the means to distract the mind. Medical practitioners counsel to take a thing and concentrate all the attention on its details depicting everything: the colour, attributes, height, width and unusual characteristics. The fundamental thing to get over anxiety is not to think of it. It is essential to go on doing ones duties and direct the mind on other subjects. One of the most effective ways is slowing down the breathing. People should inhale and exhale in equal time intervals and pay attention they are breathing through the nose using the diaphragm and abdominal muscles. This facilitates to correct the imbalance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood stream. The patients must remain in the present, and instead of future bound views it is better to ask, “What is occurring now?” and “How do I care to reply to it?” It is important for the individuals to accept how they feel when they are having anxiety problems. It is better to be adrift with the symptoms of anxiety allowing them to pass with time instead of fighting with them.

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is a feeling of worry, distress, doubt, and fear as a result of perceiving some threat or danger. However, it rarely happens that anxiety is a reaction to real menace. Nevertheless, some important events in life such as health problems, earnings, family life, or interpersonal relations make also play some part in anxiety development. Sometimes the cause of anxiety is hidden and unknown. The most important characteristic of anxiety is powerful mental uneasiness and fear of failure. The suffer tries to concentrate attention only on one task at a time.

How to fight anxiety being armed with knowledge of psychology

Psychologists state that anxiety is an experiencing of panic symptoms, scare and inquietude deprived of understandable explanation. Anxiety may take place as a reaction to quite a harmless condition. It may as well reflect an indwelling internal psychological disagreement. Physicians say that intensified, frequent and recurring anxiety without any explainable reason must be considered as a symptom of a psychological disorder. When the fear is evoked by a particular condition or a subject, physicians call this state phobia.

What may provoke anxiety and fears?

Specialists in psychoanalysis consider anxiety as the manifestation of the internal emotional and mental conflict produced by inhibited experiences and feelings concerning values and goals of life. Anxiety appears when aggressive and sexual desires made the patients behave inappropriately. Anxiety in this case is a provocative factor of defensive action to suppress these desires. Anxiety may also result from terror produced by imaginary threat to ego or self-pride.
Behaviorism interprets anxiety as conditioned response to frustrating consequences of real life. Behaviourists think that anxiety is learned when fears come about together with practically indifferent objects or events and are wrongly associated with them.
Separation anxiety taking the form of fear and nervousness may be caused by being away from home and friends. It happens most often when a child is taken away from its mother.

What are clinical manifestations of anxiety?

Physical symptoms of anxiety may manifest in muscle tension, upset stomach, shortness of breath, and palpitations. The tension receives the pattern of insomnia, explosions of fretfulness, agitation, and dread. Children suffering from anxiety are frightened, cautious, and over-dependent on their parents. They might complain of sleep disturbances and incubuses.

How is specific phobia treatment realized?

Exposure therapy – Doctors affirm that psychological approaches are the best ways for specific phobia treatment. Most doctors prefer the exposure therapy to the feared object or situation for their patients. This method is also known as systematic desensitization. Exposure to feared objects and situations is considered to be the treatment of choice in case of specific phobias. The method presupposes frequent confrontation with the situation producing fear. This repetitive exposure is performed until the situation generates no fear. The best effect is achieved when the exposure takes place frequently and continues for a long period until the fear is reduced. This kind of specific phobia treatment is particularly effective in patients who earnestly want to get rid of their phobias. The treatment usually begins with simple imagining the contact with the object of fear or finding oneself in the situation producing apprehension. After that doctor and patient proceed to the real contact with the object of fear. Doctors and patients create fear hierarchy and the least fear provoking stimulus is introduced the first with subsequent presentation of more feared objects in the hierarchy. Exposure is step by step increased but sometimes it is performed abruptly and in this case is called “flooding”.
Cognitive therapy presupposes identification of patient’s anxious thoughts provoking anxiety and replacement of these thoughts with other ones better reflecting the real state of affairs. Isolated cognitive therapy alone is usually not enough for specific phobia treatment. However, some patients take advantage of using cognitive approaches together with repetitive exposure to situations of fear. As a matter of fact, doctors recur to these approaches when they think that the phobia is supported by considerable cognitive constituent. The patient is taught to manage the startling events and use the self-control mechanisms to cope with the situation.
Medications – The vast majority of doctors think that the drugs have narrow application in the specific phobia treatment. However, some patients with specific phobias such as fear of flights or driving may benefit from anti-anxiety drugs such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and benzodiazepines. However, medications cannot replace the behavioural exposure treatments.

Psychotherapy and social phobia treatment

Psychotherapeutic methods used for treatment of social phobia include training of social skills, training of relaxation, exposure to feared situation and regular desensitization. Some patients with social phobias lack certain social skills, such as the skill to enter into conversation with other people. For such patients training of social skills and assertive training can be extremely effective part of the treatment directed to the reduction of phobic uneasiness.

Method of a choice in the social phobia treatment is the cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy, which combines an exposure to frightening situations with management of anxiety. Relapses after treatment by this method occur less often than after treatment with exposure only. Doctors practicing cognitive therapy affirm that maladaptive way of thinking leads to unpleasant emotional condition creating emotional problems. Maladaptive thinking does not provide satisfactory and suitable adjustment to the environmental conditions or situations.  As a result of this thinking the patient comes to convictions that are false and logically unsubstantiated. Cognitive therapy presupposes the identification of such attitudes and helps the patient to unite them with emotional problems guiding the patient to accepting rational choice. Maladaptive thinking also points to defects of cognitive processes. Patients are inclined to wrong generalizations and are expecting the worst of any event. Helping the patients change their understanding of the situation, doctors increase the probability of positive and reasonable emotional reactions, and thus improve adaptive behavior.

Pharmacotherapy and social phobia treatment

Benzodiazepines reduce symptoms of a social phobia; however, in case of their long use there is a high risk of dependence. The main role of benzodiazepines is to help the patient to cope with social problems during the initial period when other kinds of treatment have not led to the improvement yet.

Beta-blockers of atenolol type help to cope with tremor and palpitations, which frequently are the most disturbing symptoms, especially in certain variants of social phobias.

Monoamine oxidase inhibitors interfere with the action of monoamine oxidase that is involved in the metabolism of serotonin. As a result, serotonin accumulates within the nerve cells. The research of monoamine oxidase inhibitors such as phenelzine used for social phobia treatment was more effective than placebo and atenolol. Reversible MAO inhibitor moclobemide is also effective and less dangerous as regards the interaction with food. The effect of short-term therapy with phenelzine is comparable with the action of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy. There are data about the efficiency of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor fluoxetine, however, controllable research of comparison of its effectiveness with placebo and other drugs is necessary.

Approaches to post traumatic stress treatment

Psychotherapy:

When the disease is diagnosed by the doctors, they usually recur to cognitive-behavioral therapy. In some cases, group therapy and relaxation show good results. The patients’ condition is discussed with the doctor during the interview and all signs and symptoms are taken into consideration. Doctors say that it is very important to give the patient opportunity to react the amassed negative emotions in the early stages of post traumatic stress treatment. Using directed pictorial representations doctors ask the patient to envision anxiety-provoking events. By this approach the therapist gets better comprehension of the symptoms analyzing patients’ thoughts and emotions of disturbing lines. Cognitive therapy is frequently used in combination with behavioral therapy and as a form of post traumatic stress treatment. It is gaining extensive application in the treatment of depression accompanying the post-traumatic stress disorder. Cognitive therapy is considered to be no less effective as antidepressants. It is used with success in anxiety therapy as well as in the severely cases of post-traumatic stress disorder. Sometimes doctors recur to exposure therapy, where the patient is step by step exposed to the controlled frightening situation. It is very important to change the attitude of surrounding people to the patient. It particularly concerns the members of his family. They should understand what occurs to the patient and how to behave with him. The effective help to patients with post-traumatic stress disorder may be rendered by the groups of mutual help.

Pharmacotherapy:

Medicines are used only at the beginning of the treatment for reduction of depression in case of pronounced depressive syndrome. Medications are also useful when there are signs of intoxications due to drug dependence. They also help to normalize the patients’ night sleep. Symptoms are relieved with antidepressants that allow patients to restart a normal life, improving sleep and making psychotherapy more effective. Tranquilizers should be used very cautiously as the risk of dependence in post-traumatic stress disorder is very high. Untreated condition may last for many years, with depression aggravation and sometimes leading to suicide.