Growing Self Esteem

Fear is a natural feeling and it is even helpful especially in precarious situations. When we experience fear, our senses our heightened to a very sensitive level it warns us instantaneously of impending danger and forces us to act in self-preservation and in aid of other people. Fires and other calamitous circumstances stimulate the adrenaline in us that jumpstarts our bodily engines and keeps us alert, enabling us to move quicker than our usual.

However, too much fear is also unsafe, sometimes even more dangerous than the situation itself, forcing people who are struck with fear to act irrationally and beyond the reasons of logic and in due course of the whole panic attack making the worst decisions in dire situations. Millions die each year more because of panic attacks, not because of the perilous situation itself, and many of these individuals could have been still alive today if not for the absurd steps that they took during their risky predicament and if they only kept calm and thought things over, they may have not been part of these sad casualty statistics.

Now there are people who suffer panic attacks brought about by their phobias and these individuals belong to a more advanced level of phobia sufferers, which definitely is tagged as a mental health issue. The latest survey proves that ten percent of the country’s population is actually suffering from different forms of anxiety disorders and sometimes they are misdiagnosed as being emotionally weak and are commonly ignored and neglected.

These phobias, when unchecked and allowed to progress, may lead to panic attacks and someone who shows the early signs of any kind of phobia should seek professional help in order to arrest its development and further damage to himself and to others around him. Both major types of phobias; specific phobia and social phobia, can build up and in due time lead to panic attacks. Agoraphobia, the fear of being in the middle of large crowds, can lead to panic attacks as well as an advanced fear of social situations such as speaking engagements and the like. These are some of the most common phobias.

Medical help is definitely needed to allay the fears of people who suffer from phobias that force them to have panic attacks – in the form of phobias advice. There is cognitive-behavior therapy or CBT which is a gradual process of overcoming someone’s fears and the proper management of his anxieties and fears. This treatment includes breathing exercises and relaxation techniques.

Technorati Tags: cognitive-behavior, cognitive-behavior therapy, phobias

At some point, especially when we were all young, we suffered from an absurd fear or two and these fears were influenced by a lot of factors including peer threat. You may recall the time when you had shriek and jump onto the nearest elevated object at the sight of cockroaches or rats. And how many wince the moment they realize that they are about to taste the sting brought about by syringe needles which led many to fear doctors, most especially dentists? Many, although already grown ups, have never gotten over their fear of heights, the dark, small and enclosed places, public speaking, and a whole lot more and all these are considered minor types of fears. However, for some, these same fears have led them to react irrationally and the same kind of fear has hindered them from performing several supposedly normal activities that are regularly done by other people and these fears are called phobias – people try many forms of help including the Linden method.

List of phobias are generally grouped into four and they are:

When a phobia is set off by a definite circumstance like the fear of high places, fear of tunnels, fear of flying, fear of elevators, and fear of enclosed places, this kind of fear is tagged as situational phobia.

1. When we were young, one’s fear of needles may have been founded on the fear of pain. But when we start to mature, we should have also outgrown these kinds of fears and we have not, if we still fear shots or the sight of blood or being injured, the type of phobia we are suffering from is called blood-injection-injury phobia.
2. Animal phobia is characterized by fears on specific animals or insects. This includes the fear of dogs, fear of spiders, fear of snakes, fear of cockroaches, and the fear of rodents.
3. Natural environment phobias are based on fear of heights, of water, of the dark, and fear of storms.
4. Social phobia is the fear on situations that involve a lot of people such as speaking in public and the like. People who suffer from social phobia are afraid of rejection, of embarrassment, and of being judged and this when unchecked may even lead to panic attacks.

Attacks of phobia is usually characterized by palpitations and a pounding heart, shortness of breath, chest pains, profuse sweating, nausea, stomach stress, a choking feeling, accelerated heart rate that may lead to hypertension.

Technorati Tags: Attacks of phobia, phobia, phobias

In this article I am going to explain about how I have managed to turn my life around from one which was constantly living in fear, to one where I now look forward to the future. I hope this proves to be interesting and beneficial to anyone who reads it.

I was always the type of person who would be constantly worrying about many different aspects of life and who was seemingly always stressed. It could be about business; I am involved in DVD authoring, offering Marks and Spencer Voucher Codes and I also help people with a cost reduction strategy. I could not find a way to break through from this vicious cycle and at many a time I wondered whether it was worth living at all. I have to admit that on many occasions I have gone to bed hoping that I would die in my sleep and therefore would not wake up.

I am virtually sure that I am not the only one who lives life in this way. What I decided to do was to try to work out what exactly was causing my anxiety and stress.

It was about being honest with myself. There have been many a night where I have been unable to get to sleep all night, basically I had too many worries circling through my mind. This meant that I could not relax and therefore could not sleep.

By thinking clearly, I realised that I had a fear of the future. I am someone who talks to myself quite a lot, a bit strange I know. I would often be asking myself a number of questions:

What will happen if I lose my job?

How will I cope if my girlfriend leaves me?

I have been invited to one of best friends wedding on Saturday. I do not really want to go just in case people think that I am an idiot or in case I do something stupid?

I am going on holiday in three months time, how will I cope if there are any problems with the plane etc?

How am I going to afford to buy my first house?

How will I cope when my parents die?

These are just a few of many questions that I used to ask myself.

I decided to discuss the way I was living my life and my fears to my parents. They gave me some superb advice. These people said that stressing about a situation does not help one little bit – I needed to occupy my time more so that I would not have so much to stress. At the end of the day the only thing that each of us can do each and every day is to give our best – if I do this then I have nothing to fear or worry about. These people advised that I needed to shake off the negative attitude that I had had for far too long and that I needed to focus on what I had in life rather than on what I believed I did not have. There will no doubt be challenges ahead but you need to deal with them when they arise.

I have taken on board there advice even though it has not been easy. My life is now so much better and when a fear comes into my head I just bat it away.

Technorati Tags: anxiety, being honest with myself, fear, living in fear, phobias, unable to get to sleep all night