What makes a normal brain different than someone with anxiety? Is it all just chemicals?
In: Biology
Brains with anxiety are normal as well most of the time. A heightened response is a response to stress. Imagine something very dangerous coming towards you and you need to escape, this heightened response is what happens in your body and you either freeze, run, or fight. The problem is, sometimes this stress response can be triggered when there is no danger.
Your body releases chemicals that help you with this response (cortisol, adrenaline (epinephrine)). When those are released you experience an increase in nervous system activity, specifically in the sympathetic nervous system or your fight or flight system. This causes things such as increased heart rate, decreased appetite, raise in blood pressure etc. so you can act on the danger.
As you can likely understand, sometimes this happens when there is no danger at all and that is a problem. It can be caused from stress that doesn’t necessarily put us in harms way or danger (job stress, family stress etc), but our body still thinks we need to fight, flight, or freeze.
I hope this makes sense, if not I can clarify anything that doesn’t 🙂
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