PANIC ATTACKS

The following information is here to help you learn and treat panic attacks. Panic attacks can come on anytime, anywhere, with no warning. It can happen in the mall, car, bus, etc. When we start getting panic attacks, the fear of them coming on stays for a long time. You set and dwell on the thought that if you go back to that scene you will have another. You feel as if you will lose control, go insane, die, or you won't be able to get to your "safe place." The safe place of person is usually a home, or somewhere very familiar and comfortable. The safe person is usually a spouse, parent, or friend. Believe it or not, there is no safe place or safe person. You are the one that is scaring yourself into a panic. This took me so long to accept, but once I read about what I was actually doing to my self, I then realized there was a number of thing. Anticipatory thoughts, negative thoughts, what if's, I can not's, these are what cause us to panic. We will go over these more in debt on seperate pages, but we now need to see what exactly is panic attacks, what causes them and how we can get rid of them.

What exactly causes anxiety? Well you do. Nothing outside of you causes it. You ask how, why? After you have a panic attack, you then begin gettig concern with your body and the feelings going on in side. You keep thinking about them to the point to where you actually start to scare yourself. This causes the internally anxiety. Your body senses the fear and releases chemical stumulants into your system to strengthen you body so it can fight or flee from whatever it is that's causing the fear, whether it be real or imagined. These chemicals are adrenaline, sodium lactate and cortisol. As you axniety continues to grow, more chemicals are released into your system. This causes your to enter a second stage of anxiety. Now your main concern is no longer the particular problem that brought on the stress. Your problem now is the "weird feeling" and "strange symptoms" that your body is now experiencing. You become so caught up in wondering what is wrong with you that you become bewildered and confused. Due to this your defenses are down, your sensitivity level is up and you go into a panic. The anxiety is so overwhelming that you fear you will lose control.Now at this point it is important to realize that you will not go crazy, faint, die, so insane, any of those things that you may think will happen. Your mind and body can only maintain this state of anxiety for a few moments or hours at the most. Then you will feel tired and depressed.

There are two types of anxiety: external and internal. Internal is generated or caused by something real, something that is going on in your life. Here is a few examples: new job, marriage, birth, financial loss, divorce, anything that my change your life drastically. It can be brought on by something traumatic as someone trying to phsycially hurt you, be simply watching a tv show or concern about a furture event. Internal anxiety is generated or caused by your concern about your external anxiety and the way it has made you feel. You only experience internally generated anxiety if you choose to. By choosing to be less affected by external events and externally generated anxiety, you minimize internally generated anxiety. What the anxious person does at this time is to add internally generated anxiety that really isn't valid. "What is wrong with me," "Am i going to faint?" "An I goint to lose control and go insane?" These are not valid thoughts because they are not true. How you ever worried so much about something and it never happens? You could have done something else to help yourself besided thinking those thoughts. Usually when you are thinking these, you are sitting all alone and worring when you could be doing somthing fun and exciting. See now why panic attacks change us. It is the internal anxiety that gets us into trouble. It's from this internally generated anxiety that we get obsessive and carried away, scaring ourselves with untrue thoughts and increasing our body symptoms. You must learn to stop, give yourself permission to have externally generated anxiety, tell yourself why you're having it and let it pass. Easier said then done, huh? But it is so true and step by step we can do this, we have to if we want to get better.

There are 6 steps to dealing with panic attacks: 1. Recognize that you are feeling anxious. Accept your body feelins as a symptom of your anxiety and a sign that something is bothering you. 2. Try to figure out what really is bothering you. It is some conflict that you don't want to deal with? An expectation? What is exacty bothering you? 3. Give yourself permission to feel anxious about whatever it is that is bothering you. 4. Use positive dialogue to talk yourself through the anxious time. It will pass. 5. Get busy. Do something to release some of the anxiety. Walk, run, clean, get on the computer.... 6. Try to see a little humor in the way you feel. You feel weird, but you don't look weird. It takes time and patients to get through these. Just like losing weight, it won't happen over night. You taught yourself how to have the panic attacks, teach yourself how not to.

Below is some links that I have added to explain more of why we have panic attacks, I recommend you take the time to read them.

Negative Talk

Anger

Assertiveness

Do's and Don't's

e-mail me if you have any questions

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