One person may experience a mild tightening of the chest, increased heart and breathing rate and a slight flush just before stepping onto a stage to make a public speech.

Another may experience the sudden onset of a full-blown panic attack that includes profuse sweating, shortness of breath and an intense headache at the thought of speaking to a single person they don't know at a small party.

In our two cases above, the first is a very mild, completely normal and natural human fear response.

Speaking in public has been identified as the number one fear of adults across all ages, incomes and professional backgrounds.

It harkens back to the dawn of time when man's "flight or fight responses" were a bit more primitive and had deadlier consequences than any botched speech is likely to have.

This sort of normal anxiety response can actually be a good thing, helping to keep that reluctant public speaker focused and alert to his audiences' response to his remarks.

The second case, however, can be just the "straw that broke the camel's back" that leads to years of escalating attacks that are physically and emotionally crippling.

When that happens and anxiety is constant or overwhelming, when it interferes with your relationships and activities-that's when you might think you've crossed the line from normal anxiety into the territory of anxiety disorders.

The fact is, you may have been dancing close to, or on that line, for years and for reasons that have little or nothing to do with strangers at a party.

Anxiety can look very different from person to person, and the supposed causes of the anxiety attack can be equally diverse. As a result, the established medical community continues to treat the symptoms instead of the true underlying causes of most anxiety and panic attacks.

Those symptoms can manifest themselves mentally and emotionally, and, or physically. Some of the primary emotional symptoms of anxiety include irrational and excessive fears. Worst of all is when you consciously realize that your fear or dread is irrational, yet you cannot banish the feeling.

Other common emotional symptoms are less easy to spot. They include trouble concentrating and sudden feelings that your mind has gone blank. You could also feel extremely tense, irritable or jumpy, yet be unable to pinpoint a cause for the feeling.

Other times, your anxiety is manifested physically, through an upset stomach, intense fatigue, or the pounding heart and shortness of breath we mentioned earlier. 

In some of these cases, anxiety sufferers mistakenly believe they are physically ill. It may take many, many trips to the doctor before a diagnosis of anxiety is even made. It can be a long and painful road from there as well to understanding the true, root causes of your anxiety.

Only when those root causes are finally exposed and understood can you begin to reverse the damage and become well. The good news is that your treatment doesn't need to include a lot of drugs or years of therapy. Natural anxiety therapy has proven to be the best and longest lasting course of relief.

Jen Crippen calls herself a "former, burned out anxious chick." Her search for relief led her to learn and try every anxiety therapy she could.

Now she shares what's worked, and what hasn't in her NaturalAnxietyTherapy.com blog. Visit today and sign up to receive "5 Things You Can Do RIGHT NOW to Reduce Anxiety" as her gift.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jen_Crippen

Jen Crippen is author of the ebook Lets Get Physical: Anxiety Is Not All In Your Head.

anxiety relief programs, anxiety relief products, treating anxiety, treating stress, managing stress