By Robert Mantell, Ph.D., C.M.Ht. I believe the brain has a positive intent for everything it does — everything — including causing a person to experience chronic and debilitating forms of anxiety such as phobias, panic attacks, post-traumatic stress, agoraphobia, social phobia, and OCD. Thus, the positive purpose for the presence of the various expressions of anxiety in a person’s life is to act as a kind of protective barrier, if you will, from the kinds of situations, circumstances, people or things the brain greatly fears will lead to pain, based on past experience.

What Are The Causes of Panic Attacks? The short and obvious answer: panic attacks are caused by high anxiety. But, what exactly is anxiety? Understanding how anxiety crops up will help you defeat panic attacks. Anxiety is probably the most basic of all emotions. While anxiety, by its nature, is an unpleasant sensation, it is not by any means dangerous.

Even if you are an experienced actor or other performer, you may still experience stage fright or insecurity. But there are effective ways to deal with anxiety so you can work with more power and creative satisfaction.

Briefly, self-esteem is about how you relate to yourself. Do you like, respect, trust, and believe in yourself? When you like yourself, you can live comfortably with both your personal strengths and weaknesses without undue self-criticism.

The true causes of anxiety lie in the subconscious mind.

The research found that anxious individuals find it harder to avoid distractions and take more time to turn their attention from one task to the next than their less anxious peers.

Acclaimed singer Susan Boyle had been on a “tremendous rollercoaster” and was struggling to adjust to her new life after her performances on Britain’s Got Talent, and suffered an anxiety attack, her brother said.

My experience is that for, oh, 70 to 80% of the people, when the beliefs go away, they never come back. So, there’s no thinking about it, there’s no working on it. When you get rid of the belief ‘I’m not good enough’ and, or whatever the beliefs happen to be, and all the beliefs that cause the given problem, the problem goes away, and the beliefs don’t come back.

Transcript of audio podcast interview by Douglas Eby with Judith Orloff M.D. about her new book "Emotional Freedom."She says there are better ways than medications to manage anxiety: "Medication alters your neurochemicals, but I believe that we can do that naturally with our own techniques and our own meditation practices."

You and I both have a belief about who and what we are. Indeed, everybody does. Many different events happen to you throughout your life and it is how you assign meanings to these events that forms the belief you have about yourself. If you view these events negatively, you can form a victim mindset, a mindset that will send stress levels soaring and cause you misery for a long time.