panic attacks and anxiety

[punisa]

This topic was already mentioned a few times, but I came to realize something recently... seems that whenever I start talking about this topic people tell me they are suffering or have suffered from these symptoms.

Story is always quite similar, usually everyone tries to conceal the symptoms from friends and are sort of relieved when you start talking about it.

Symptoms are almost always the same, after a prolonged stress you start feeling weird things like an approaching heart attack, mental breakdown or even death.
Nothing ever happens actually, but the feeling is always real and "in your face".

Almost everyone I talked to about this told me they went to the doctor and first thing they did was to get a heart check, Electrocardiogram (EKG or ECG) Test.
And they felt much better once they found out their ticker runs smoothly.

So what actually causes this?
I went on to read more about it, apparently very young people (young teens) are suffering from this also and the number is on the rise.

A person who is more qualified on the topic told me that it has something to do globally. How life (I guess one's future) became very uncertain and that the stress accumulates consciously and subconsciously eventually triggering panic attacks, heavy anxiety and depression as a sort of "normal" body response to everything.

If anyone is interested in discussion, please join in.

[Invincible Summer]

I'd say that could very well be part of it, at least for me. Before I started going to a counsellor and got my anxiety more under control, I felt like my life was so aimless and I was in such a rut that I became anxious about making even the smallest decisions out of fear that somehow these decisions would make my future really bad or something. It was really irrational and frustrating. This inability to make decisions subsequently made me very depressed.

I could see how the pressures of society to conform to a variety of social roles, norms, stereotypes, etc would cause people to feel anxious. Men are pressured to be "manly," yet full-out machismo is looked down upon; the "nice guy" is portrayed as someone who gets nowhere; "real men" are breadwinners, but what if they can't get a good job?
Similarly, women are supposed to be "sexy" yet not "slutty" (although the line is blurry); successful yet a family-woman, etc.

The capitalist media plays on all these insecurities and exacerbates them. These values are appropriated by members of society, who perpetuate the insecurity. I'm not saying it's some giant media conspiracy, but more that society (I'm not even sure I can fully lay the blame on capitalism :p) expects so many different things from each person. No one can truly just be who they want to be. At least in my case, I'd feel like I'm letting someone down.

[Quail]

I think that there is a lot of pressure on young people in a capitalist society - it's continually drummed into us by the media, teachers, parents, etc that we have to study hard, do well in our exams and get good grades so that we can get a good, well-paid job. There are also excessive amounts of exams/assessed pieces of work in most subjects, I think. Of course, there is also pressure from our peers to look a certain way and act a certain way or whatever.

I don't find it surprising at all that anxiety is a common problem. From personal experience, anxiety is made worse by stress, which as I said above isn't exactly in short supply. Obviously people get anxious for lots of different reasons, but if stress tends to make it worse, it could be a sign that society puts too much stress and pressure on us if it is such a common problem.

(Sorry if that was poorly worded =\)