Anxiety Support Group

What do you mean? Can you go into a little bit more detail?

Adrenaline can be positive if short term. If too much is released for a long period, it can overstress your entire body (muscles, organs, etc). You might want to look at the information on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epine...

My therapist came up with a really good depiction of anxiety. When a person faces a difficult situation that causes fear the body switches a switch into fight mode, which releases adrenaline to combat whatever is going on. When the situation is over the body stops feeling fear and turns the switch off and we go back to "normal" mode. With a person who has anxiety when faced with a fearful situation the switch gets stuck and we can't stop feeling fear so the body keeps releasing adrenaline and we go on adrenaline overload and the anxiety will increase until we calm ourselves down.

There are things you can do to help yourself as far as medication or breathing exercises. It sounds like you are pretty active. Have you talked to a doctor yet?

At this point the best thing to do is talk to a doctor about it or read up on it yourself as well as having a support group, ie us.

Good luck. I'm here to talk if you need it.

Hi,

Chrystal offered a very good explanation of the process of anxiety. The "flight or fight response" is triggered in our bodies when we are in danger. If someone approaches you with a gun this system activates adrenaline for brief bursts of energy to help us to either fight or flight (runaway). When we are looking at anxiety disorders, this system is activated by our brain because we perceive danger (even if we are not really in any danger.)

It is not uncommon for people to have anxiety when an adrenaline response is encountered. These two events are very similiar (rapid heartbeat, shorter breathing, etc.) When another adrenaline incident occurs you have two options: you can perceive the event as excitement (such as on a roller coaster) or as anxiety. Next time, try viewing those sensations as excitement rather than anxiety.

What may help is reminding yourself that you can choose how that rush of adrenaline affects you. Also remind yourself that those feelings will pass with time.

SWIMMING COMBATS THE ADRENALINE CYCLE, AND RELEASES ENDORPHINES WHICH ALSO HELP.
sTOPPING THE CYCLE BEFORE TOO-MUCH ADRENALINE IS RELEASED, IS A GOOD STRATEGY. jESSICA