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We’ve been thinking about all the fears that exist out there. There are quite a few of them. There are tons of them. Some you have heard about before while others aren’t so well known. Here are some of the most common ones that have an impact of causing one anxiety attacks. These are just some things that you might find every day.

One of the first ones I think all of us feel when we have to go through this. The anxiety that comes about this particular one is very embarrassing for when it happens is at the worst time possible. This phobia is the fear of talking in front of people. The anxiety attacks that come from this can be pretty devastating from nausea to passing out to much more. It’s pretty hard core.

Another common phobia that many have out there is claustrophobia. This can get pretty bad at times when we are in tight corners. Corners don’t have to be the only thing. Ever felt cramped on an elevator? That can get pretty hard to handle at times.

There are the common fears as well as fear of bugs. There are a few types of creepy crawly things or things that fly that people are afraid of. When we looked at those fears they are bees as many are allergic to them, spiders, and then just bugs in general.

Many people have a fear of water. For some reason or anther, their anxiety attacks when they go near what other people love. For many people who have this fear, it’s because something tragic happened. For many, it’s because they nearly drowned or felt as though they were nearly drowning. Others have watched people who have drowned. Those are all bad experiences in which people haven’t been able to cope. This has been the way they cope.

For others, they fear heights. We think half the world has this fear. It’s the anxiety that is caused with looking down. While others live for this feeling, the feeling of falling scares some people to death. They feel as though being up high keeps them from being in control even if they can hold on tight.

The last thing that many fear is the fear of failure. This seems to drive many people so hard that they constantly have health issues. They are constantly trying to make people happy. They can’t stand negative feedback. This isn’t a way to live, but many out there are reading this and live with this condition every single day of their lives.

So, here you have the most common fears that cause anxiety attacks. They can really make a person go crazy as they make a person fuss over making sure they stay away from their fears. If you have a fear, you might want to keep dibs on it to make sure that it doesn’t’ get too out of hand. This is when things can get really bad. When things get really bad, then they often need to seek medical help from www.worldmedsdirect.com to cure their sickness.

In 1986, Constance A. Mellon, a North Carolina library sciences professor published her theory of library anxiety. After two years of qualitative research, involving over 6000 students, she published a research paper entitled, ‘Library Anxiety, a grounded theory and its development’, in the journal ‘College and Research Libraries’.

Mellon aimed her research to tabulate a very interesting and common library behavior. She tried to find out the reason why people, doing their academic research in libraries, are sometimes scared to access the full use of a library. For this detailed qualitative research she used the technique of ‘journal writing’ or ‘talking on paper’. The students, who felt inhibited in the library, were asked to freely relate their feelings on a piece of paper and these confessions were later analyzed and tabulated.

Mellon’s findings helped to surface several reasons behind this intimidated information-behavior. She found out that students often felt ‘inferiority complex’ in presence of others. Most thought that the other guy was smarter than him or her, so they felt it wise not to reveal their ‘stupidity’. Other reasons included a fear while facing the vastness of knowledge in a library, and a fear of not being able to be patient enough in a library.

This study was further forwarded by researcher Carol C. Kuhlthau who postulated that feelings and interactions between students also affected their library behavior. Sharon L. Bostick, in 1992, devised a measurement scale to calculate the different extents of library anxiety. She emphasized on the role of library staff in dismissing the library anxiety from the students’ mind.
Sharon formulated a test where a student has to give answers to 43 questions regarding library behavior. The questions in this test were devised based on a scale called the Likert scale. The 43 questions have five alternative answers to choose form.
The traditional 5 points of a Likert scale are:

Anxieties have gripped some people so much that it has caused people to have different health problems. This is due to all the side effects that are most common with anxiety. You might have had fears yourself. They might have been small. What things can be caused from this? Here are some things we have found that anxiety can cause.

One of the biggest things that anxiety can cause is obsessive compulsive disorder. Because you fear so much, you have to have things a certain way. These anxieties run you life so much that you can actually cause yourself more anxieties.

Another thing that can happen from so much anxiety is heart trouble. You heart pounds when you are stressed and scared. It works double time. When it does this, you are adding extra stress to your heart. If you don’t get your fears under control, this can ruin your life.

High blood pressure can also be an issue when you have anxieties that start controlling your life. This can really hurt you if you don’t’ get both your stress and your fears under control. It can actually kill you if you let it get too bad. Many people have to deal with this and many people are on medication. Sometimes medication is the only option, but for those who have added stress in their lives, this is one way to lower their high blood pressure without medication.

There are many mind consuming issues that can arrive as well. What do we mean by this? Well it means that many people get mental conditions that actually prevent them from going on with life. We discussed one earlier. This is OCD.

The added stress of constantly living in fear can cause your stomach to be in a mess. Stress itself is a really bad thing. We all hate stress. This can screw with your whole body, but can also cause a stomachache. That doesn’t feel too good. Trust me when I tell you this. It’s no fun at all. You can actually get ulcers which hurt even worse.

Last, but not least, you can get migraines. While there are a lot of different things that can cause migraines, guess what else can. You guessed it right if you guessed stress. If you don’t’ get this you can get some pretty serious ones that can lay you up in bed for quite a while. Trust us when you can’t open your eyes due to the darn lights. We’ve had them before and can take a page just telling you all about migraines, but we won’t for the sake of time.

Anxieties have a way of controlling people. They really aren’t helpful or healthy for you. Until you get a hold on them, they will dominate you. This can get pretty bad and can leave you feeling that life isn’t worth it because you are sick all the time. If you have a phobia, please get help. Keep fear at bay. Conquer all those fears.

A panic attack or panic disorder is a sudden stage of intense nervous ‘flutter’ that a person may experience.  In other words, panic attacks refer to the abrupt and intense upsurge of anxiety that tends to overwhelm the normal reasoning ability of a person. The attack is characterized by distinct symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, headache, palpitations, chills or hot flashes and paresthesia.  Paresthesia refers to the feeling of ‘numbness’ in the body. The feelings of an unreal detached self can also be felt during a panic attack. It is indeed a very intense form of anxiety.

Panic attack is also linked to agoraphobia (fear of trapped in an unwanted situation) and glossophobia (stage fright). Panic attack in itself is physiologically harmless, as the symptoms tend to fade away after some time. Chest pain is a peculiar symptom of a panic attack. Such a chest pain often misleads the mind to believe that the body is having a heart attack and this usually makes matters worse during such attacks. People also get afraid of becoming insane and suffering from a nervous breakdown during a panic attack. Thus the symptoms of an uncontrolled panic attack tend to form a ‘positive loop’ and act as a positive stimulus for themselves. That means the more you get panicked, more the symptoms of the attack will tend to overwhelm you.

There are many reasons that are cited to explain a panic attack. Such an attack often accompanies other anxiety disorders like the obsessive compulsive disorder (OCd) or the Post Traumatic Stress disorder (PTSd). Long term reasons like heredity have also been found playing a role in inducing panic attacks. Certain chemical substances like the alcohol, amphetamine, caffeine have also been known to be agents of panic attack. The side effects of medications like Ritalin (methylephenidate) and fluoroquinolone type antibiotics can also induce panic attacks.

The best way to overcome a panic order is to be assertive over the symptoms of the attacks. The idea is to not to panic.

Glossophobia or stage fear is a very common experience of anxiety. ‘Gloss’ is ‘tongue’ in Greek. It is the fear of speaking or performing in front of an audience. Glossophobia is classified as a type of performance anxiety. It is accompanied by distinct symptoms like going weak in knees, mouths drying up, hearing a buzz inside ears, butterflies in the stomach, and going complete blank in public. Stage fright accompanies the event as well as the preparation for the event. Everyone, from politicians to speech therapists, students to teachers, psychologists to musicians have faced glossophobia.

Stage phobia is an unknown fear. The audience stares at the speaker or the performer in a silent anticipation of listening. This grips the speaker or the performer with this fear called glossophobia. Several reasons are cited behind this.

Firstly, is the fear of underperforming. The speaker or dancer may fear what if I forget a line or miss a step? The participation and the anticipation of the event add to the fear. In fact, the anticipation of the event is a distinct phase of glossophobia. During this time, although the performer is not performing in front of an immediate audience, yet the fear then hampers the preparations even. Stage fear can be most intense while the immediate anticipation to an event.

There are several handy tips to cope up with the pressure. Keeping the mind free and concentrating only on the performance is one of them. Music or a quiet time can be good antidotes to stage fright.

Suggestions such as imagining the audience as a ‘cabbage field’ or thinking them in underwear have also been tried. Sometimes, athletes and performers have also confessed that their struggle with glossophobia before the performance has helped them to outperform others! The trick is to just start to do what you have to do.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder is a common type of anxiety disorder, yet few people are aware of the commonality thereof. Fortunately medical personnel and doctors are very familiar with it.

People suffering from Generalized Anxiety Disorder are unable to contain the excessive worry, with which they respond to everyday crises. The general calculations of life, like family problems, health issues, work problems etc. assume disproportionate confinements in case of generalized anxiety disorder.  These patients usually see each problem in a way more dramatic way and react extremely intense to it.

This disorder is usually accompanied by different types of physical and behavioral symptoms. A formal medical diagnosis of Generalized Anxiety disorder is needed and formal therapy should be introduced if the symptoms persist for a period of more than six months. General symptoms such as irritability, insomnia, feelings of fatigue and restlessness usually testify for the disorder.

The treatment of Generalized Anxiety Disorder is usually a combination of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and/or medications. The anti depressant medications must be carefully decided upon because of the risk of dependency. Cognitive Behavior Therapy refers to a specialized behavioral assistance to people going through GAD.

During CBT, the therapist tries to induce stress reducing behavioral changes in the lifestyle of subjects. This changes are aimed to let the subjects self help themselves in confrontations of their everyday fears. CBT is a delicately handled process and often unaccompanied by medications. CBT usually succeeds in helping out about 1/3 rd of the patients who undergo it.

A group of medicines, known as the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) is usually administered in the disorder medication. These anti-depressants block the re-absorption of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is a complex neurotransmitter that plays a vital role in several key functioning of the body. The side-effects of SSRI medications commonly include nausea, diarrhea, headache and sexual dysfunction among others.

Social anxiety refers to the particular anxiety that haunts a social being. It is the anxiety arising from the compulsion to be a part of a social group. A socially anxious person is much too nervous to be part of a social life and always secretly dreads being embarrassed or ‘left alone’ in a society. The person wants to avoid society, but being unable to do so, behaves in ways that often tilt towards severe disorder symptoms.

It is recognized as a subtype of ‘agoraphobia’ or the fear of attending a social circle. Social anxiety has been a much chased after ‘social’ issue in recent times. The huge prevalence and daily expansion of social networking sites on the internet and the encroachment of media in real life are often reasoned as two prime reasons acting behind social anxiety. Problems like being bullied in schools or being left out at a social gathering add to the complaints of social anxiety.

A socially anxious person can be recognized by distinct symptoms. The excessive use of mobile phones, excess apologizing, avoiding eye contact while speaking, trying too much to divert attention—are all traits of social anxiety. The phobia can be very intense when a person has become much too absorbed in socializing and finding friends. When no one pays attention and there is nowhere else to go to, the situation can be very distressing. It is accompanied by the induced symptoms of stammering, blushing, trembling and nausea. These symptoms have been found common with stage fright or glossophobia.

It is treated generally with Cognitive Behavior Therapy. While explaining the causes of social anxiety, psychologists very often forward the theory of ‘self-presentation’. According to this theory, a person maintains well mannered social events, but at the same time dreads that he or she is wearing a meaningless mask of a social being.

Sigismund Schlomo Freud (1856-1939) was an Austrian neurologist who is credited as the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology. This particular school of psychology, has since then been used in the deciphering of the mysteries of human mind. Modern therapy procedures like the Cognitive behavioural therapy also have its roots in the psychoanalytic theories by Freud.  The study of anxiety by Freud helps us to understand the very basic nature of this feeling and the factors guiding behavioural patterns pertaining to anxiety.

According to Sigmund Freud, anxiety is an instrument of ‘tension-reduction’ in human psyche. Human beings develop defence mechanisms within their psyche, to facilitate the tension reduction process. This article intends to outline very briefly the different types of anxieties as discussed by Freud and also the various defence mechanisms adopted for them.

Anxiety is said to be mainly of three types. The three types were classified as reality anxiety, neurosis anxiety, and moral anxiety. The reality anxiety is the common real anxieties that haunt human existence. The fear of a road accident or the fear of losing one’s job—all fall to this category. The common defence mechanism against reality anxiety is removing oneself from the fearful situation.  Neurotic anxiety is the anxiety that arises from a half-hearted realization of deep sub conscious emotions of our psyche. It is more an anxiety of keeping our sub conscious mind in control of the conscious one. Moral anxiety is akin to the feelings of guilt or shame and is explained as the fear of violating existing social norms.

The repression of feelings and the denial of reality are the two main types of defence mechanisms that were suggested for neurotic and moral anxiety. It is important to understand that the Freudian defence mechanisms all explain the tendency of overcoming the stage of anxiety. The defence mechanisms were defined as unconscious attempts of the mind to help itself out of the perturbation caused by anxiety.

Existential anxiety refers to a deep spiritual anxiety. It is the anxiety of finding nothingness after death. It is kind of the feeling of facing the unknown blank of dead. Most important point to understand here is that this is not a disorder; it is more a spiritual question to the heart. While asking the questions of existential anxiety to the mind, a person can feel the futility of life’s complicacies while in front of death.

Many have tried to explain existential anxiety in their own ways. 19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), in his study, ’The Concept of Anxiety’, described anxiety to be a part of a ‘dizziness of freedom’. This observation of Kierkegaard explains the nature of existence and suggests that anxiety is only the dizziness that accompanies freedom.

Thinkers, poets, philosophers, and wizards have all tried to solve this riddle of life and death in their own ways. The themes of none being, hopelessness, futility, existence have found recurrence in these explanations to existential anxiety. The following verses from Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘The Strange Meeting’, explains this anxiety in a strange light.
‘Strange friend,’ I said, ‘here is no cause to mourn.’
‘None,’ said that other, ‘save the undone years,
The hopelessness.
(Verses 14-16/ The Strange Meeting / Wilfred Owen)

The branch of psychotherapy that focuses on the meaning of human existence is known as logotherapy. This ‘meaning-centered’ process postulates that the exhaustion of the will to search for meanings in life, leads to ‘existential frustration’.

Existential anxiety is measured by the Good and Good (1974) Existential Anxiety Scale. This scale was jointly devised by scientists L.R. Good and K.C. Good.

There are many things doctors will do to help those who suffer from anxiety. Anxiety seems to rule people’s lives and prevent people from managing or taking charge of their own lives and it really takes a toll on the majority of people. In almost all instances, it is not only the person who suffers from an anxiety disorder, but those people close to him or her as well.

For some, there is no relief from it except for the things that their doctors do to release the stress that is associated with anxiety attacks. There are all sorts of types too. Here are some of the most common anxiety disorders and some of their treatments in which anxiety is a part of the disorder.

One of the first types of anxiety disorders is obsessive compulsive disorder. People get anxiety attacks when things don’t go just right. If things aren’t in the right place they flip out and have anxiety attacks. For this disorder, it is common practice to prescribe medication to the patient to be taken on a daily basis. They might even see a psychiatrist who can help them get through it. They might learn to cope and help them focus on other things.

Post traumatic stress disorder is another type of anxiety disorder. This anxiety disorder comes with flashes that takes you back to the stressful moments of your life and makes you feel as though you are reliving them. You are likely to wake in sweat and will have difficulty to breathe.

Many war soldiers and rape victims experience this type of disorder. Again, prescribed drugs will help to bring the situation under control. Other for om therapy that prove to be effective is to learn to figure what controls or trigger the flash backs. This is done with the help of a trained professional.