Anxiety attacks can take different forms, such as:
- Unpredictable bouts of rage or irritability
- Nit-pickiness (obsessive behavior, which may be a part of OCD), and even a hypersensitivity to disarray, chaos, or any sort of change
- Fast-talking, stuttering, stumbling over words
- Not talking at all
- Sitting rigid, staring into space, almost seeming “zoned out”
Understanding the way our or other’s anxiety works can help to decrease the stigma and help to calm a person faster and get them out of that state. These are just a few, but it gives an idea of the range in which attacks can come.
I think this is important! I am prone to all of these things at any given time when I’m in a stressful period of time. And people wonder why I’m irritable or letting my OCD get worse than normal, but it has a lot to do with anxiety attacks.
If you are writing a character with anxiety, including these symptoms can help you create a more realistic representation of what living with anxiety is like.