Anxiety and Panic
Etymologically the word anxiety derives from the Latin verb “angere" which means to suffocate. In fact, the physical sensations linked to anxiety refer to situations of constraint in which the person experiences a series of unpleasant sensations.
Shortness of breath, restlessness, disorientation, generalized fear, and difficulty relaxing and concentrating are some of the symptoms. People suffering from anxiety are oriented toward the future, a future they perceive as catastrophic.
Anxiety is closely related to fear; however, unlike fear, which usually has an identifiable object, anxiety can be defined as fear without an object.
It's a general feeling of worry about the future that can be existentially defined as the gap between now and then. Indeed, whenever we abandon the secure foundation of the present and begin to worry about the future, we experience anguish.
These states of anxiety in their most acute form become “panic attacks”.
What to do if anxiety and/or panic take over our lives?
When this happens, anxiety can be seen as the expression of a discomfort with living: as if it represented the life we don't live, that we haven't lived, or that we don't want to live.
An important therapeutic tool is the focus on the present which allows us to interrupt catastrophic projections about the future and to recognize, without judgment, our own limits.
Only by acknowledging them can we find a way to confront them, prepare to face them, or choose to avoid them if we feel we lack the resources to address them. Gestalt therapy addresses these issues through questions like: What does he do? What does he feel? What does he want? What does he avoid? What does he expect?, helps the person to consciously distinguish himself from the outside world, to feel his own emotions and to recover the dimension of responsibility, that is, what the person really wants or does not want to do.
Issues treated
In-depth looks at anxiety and panic
- How to understand if you suffer from anxiety
- Physical symptoms of anxiety: chest pain, extrasystoles, and reflux
- How to calm anxiety: what really works
- Anticipatory anxiety: the fear that arrives before things happen
- Social anxiety: symptoms, causes and how to deal with it
- Why panic attacks happen
- Nocturnal panic attacks
- Panic attacks: what to do
- Difference between anxiety and stress
- Anxiety in young people: causes, symptoms, and what to do
If panic attacks keep recurring, you can see how a course of therapy for panic attacks in Florence.
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