From all the common anxiety symptoms, heart pounding is probably one of the scariest. As you might know, general anxiety disorder can manifest through various symptoms, both physical and emotional. Heart pounding caused by anxiety is remarkably scary because its effects are simultaneously physical and psychological.
It’s very common for people whose anxiety manifests through heart pounding to feel they’re about ot have a heart attack. In fact, that’s where the real discomfort comes from in this kind of panic attack: the sheer terror of feeling like your heart might seize at any moment. Needless to say, having such a terrible feeling will only make your heart pound faster!
Before we go into more details, there’s something you should know: anxiety attacks really can’t give you a heart attack. Despite of the fact your heart may beat incredibly fast, and even though you will sometimes feel like it will burst out from your chest at any moment. Panic attacks and heart attacks are two entirely different phenomena – and if you ever (let’s hope not) have a real heart attack, you really won’t have time to obsess or even think at all.
When anxiety leads to a pounding heart, that’s actually a natural body reaction. Your mental state of anxiousness deceives your body into thinking you’re faced with some kind of eminent danger, so your body gets prepared for the “confrontation”: your heart pumps faster and you start to hyperventilate, even as your muscles get tense. You may suppose you’re about to have a stroke, but that’s really just your body getting ready to either fight or run away from the danger.
Whenever you feel your level of anxiety rising and your heart starts pounding, here’s what you need to do: as much as possible, be unafraid. If you start obsessing that you’ll have a heart attack, that will make your heart rate get even higher, and you’ll really feel worse. In order to counter the pounding sensation in your chest, you just need to distract yourself from that sensation.
Try walking around and breathing slowly. Do whatever it takes to take your mind off the fearful thoughts of having a heart attack. Remember, if you were really about to have a heart attack, you wouldn’t be able to move around much, neither would you be able to over-analyze like it’s typical of people having anxiety problems.
