STRESS BREAKDOWN AND PSYCHOSOMATIC DISORDERS
Illness as a result of the preparation component of the anxiety reaction
There are many patterns of symptoms, illness and physical discomfort, caused by the different ways the body prepares itself to deal with the possible threat that the anxiety reaction is warning us of.
We could divide these patterns into three groups, where the symptoms have been caused by:
Over-activity of the sympathetic nervous system. These would include muscle tension and pain, headaches, muscular stiffness and fibrositis, heart palpitations and tremors.
Over-activity of the parasympathetic nervous system, secondary to the sympathetic nervous system’s over-activity. This can cause digestive disturbances and the tendency to faint.
Complex patterns of preparedness, which we can call the as if patterns.
Symptoms from chronic preparedness for physical action
Chronic over-preparedness for physical action that never eventuates, producing chronically tense muscles, can lead to muscle stiffness and inflammation of certain points within the muscles which we call fibrositis. This is a painful condition that we don’t fully understand. We do know, however, that fibrositis occurs in chronically tense muscles, that it is painful and disabling, and that it doesn’t affect trained athletes. Regular muscular exercise seems to prevent fibrositis in a person who suffers from frequent anxiety due to regular overload of the nervous system.
The adrenaline and noradrenalin secreted by the sympathetic nervous system in anxiety stimulate the heart’s pumping action and exert variable effects on the blood vessels. It used to be thought that chronic anxiety might cause chronically raised blood pressure, because it can be demonstrated that acute anxiety will produce a transient increase in blood pressure.
However, the condition known as essential hypertension, the high blood pressure tendency that often runs in families and which causes heart failure, heart attacks and strokes, is now considered by medical investigators not to be associated with anxiety. It is theoretically possible that sudden changes in blood pressure due to acute anxiety might well precipitate a crisis in a patient with essential hypertension, but the primary hypertension (raised blood pressure) is not now regarded as anxiety-related.
While we aren’t sure about blood pressure, we do know that anxiety can certainly produce uncomfortable disturbances of rhythm of the heart beat. These ‘palpitations’ may not be harmful, but they are sometimes disconcerting; they are worse with fatigue and the use of excessive stimulants such as tea and coffee.
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