When speaking of anxiety, we tend to confuse the concept with that of anguish, and although one appears immediately than the other, it is necessary to make a difference, since one is a symptom that affects the patient (anguish) and the other is the set of symptoms that make up the syndrome that afflicts the person ( anxiety).
Both form what we know as Anxiety Disorders, or in your case, the topic that we will touch on next in this article..
When we find ourselves in front of either of these two terms, the first thing we think is that we are facing the same situation and this is probably due to the colloquial use that we give to both words, where in everyday life one is practically the same as the other..
However, as mental health professionals, both terms must be well defined, as this will allow us to understand the situation the patient is going through..
The anxiety appears constantly and for a longer time in the person who suffers from it due to different events or for different causes, and mostly due to unreal and distorted thoughts that make those who suffer from it feel in constant danger.
When we begin to feel anxious, our Autonomic nervous system activates releasing adrenaline and cortisol in form of thoughts, emotions, or physiological symptoms, generating discomfort.
If we talk about an anxiety within the parameters of normality, where the person is able to tolerate it, we are talking about a symptom that allows us to survive everyday life situations, anticipating danger, looking for a way to avoid risk.
When this anxiety exceeds the person's resistance thresholds and becomes pathological, it represents a maladaptive behavior in the family, social or work areas.
For its part, anguish is an emotion that every human being will experience at least once in his life, presented as a feeling of overwhelming despair.
It presents as a feeling of being paralyzed, and unlike anxiety, physiological symptoms predominate in anxiety, characterized by headaches, enuresis, tremors, vertigo, dizziness, sweating, among others.
Once the anguish exceeds the intensity and duration with which it has been presented, we are faced with the pathology called: anxiety crisis.
An anxiety attack, also known as panic attack or panic attack, it is a set of thoughts, emotions and physiological symptoms, that is, the sum of anxiety and anguish that occurs without any specific trigger.
For the person who comes to present it, it must have been subjected to a lot stress, continuous stress, or in some cases to some traumatic event. In general, they present with an acute physical discomfort, without the person finding relief in the medication presented by the doctor, since it is a emotional distress.
Anxiety attacks arise due to the constant idea that the person has of not being able to solve any situation that he is going through, becoming an unreal fear that leads to anguish and anxiety principles, where if it is not controlled in time or exceeds the patient's resources, it then becomes a crisis that must be treated.
These, reach their maximum level during the first ten minutes, where the physical symptoms and obsessive thoughts Recurring fantasies are elevated and the person has difficulty controlling them on their own.
As we have seen in the previous sections, anxiety attacks are characterized by physical symptoms irrational thoughts and uncontrollable emotions for people.
Below are some of the characteristics of these crises that could help you identify when any of your patients present this type of pathology.
Although it is necessary to know the characteristics of anxiety attacks, it should be mentioned that the diagnosis made by us as psychologists is not enough, since in addition to adjusting to some psychotherapeutic model, we must refer the patient to the psychiatrist.
Sometimes the patient needs medication to control the neurotransmitters that we mentioned above (adrenaline and cortisol), so that in this way the patient finds a way to recover and have a better quality of life.
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