Coping With Panic Attacks

A sudden surge of terror strikes out of nowhere. Your heart pounds, you begin perspiring, you have a sudden urge to flee the situation.  What you're feeling is a panic attack. It could happen anywhere, a restaurant, the bank, an amusement park, just about anywhere in your daily life.  During panic attack, the body misinterprets an ordinary, everyday, situation as an awful, terrifying event. Caused by a misfiring of chemicals in the brain, panic attacks are much more common than you may think. They strike approximately 1 in 75 people. Fortunately, they are usually treatable and there are several ways that can help you in coping with panic attacks.

At times it may be very difficult coping with panic attacks.  In order to improve our ability to treat our panic attacks it is important that we understand a few basic things.

A few of the symptoms of a Panic Attack

• Dizzy spells leading to panic
• Tightness in throat and chest- shortness of breath
• Racing heart with tingle sensations
• Hot flushes followed by waves of anxiety
• Obsessive worries and unwanted thoughts
• Not feeling connected to what is going on around you
• Overwhelming fear that the anxiety will push you over the edge

Panic Attacks Can Disrupt Your Life

Once you've had a panic attack, you may begin having a fear of yet another attack. This fear and anxiety is often referred to as a panic disorder. You suddenly start connecting certain situations and places with panic attack's public speaking, large crowds, airplanes and restaurants  This can lead to a much more serious condition where you stop coping with panic attacks altogether.  This is called agoraphobia.  This is where you start restricting your movements to a few limited areas where you feel safe. At this point your life becomes very restricted.

What Are Panic Attacks?

In the days of the caveman, we needed to react quickly to danger in order to survive. A response called fight or flight developed within our brain. When faced with a threat, such as a wild animal attack, a release of chemicals in the body made us react quickly, without thinking, to either defend ourselves or run away. This is one of the internal mechanisms we are provided with for coping with panic attacks. This reaction, which is still with us today, and may very well be the basis of our panic attacks. During a panic attack, the fight-or-flight reaction is triggering a false alarm at an inappropriate time. The causes of these false alarms aren't clear. Research also suggests that stress and large amounts of caffeine may also play a key role in some cases. Panic attacks have a tendency to run in families and usually affect young adults; however no age, race, or gender is immune. 

Treatments

There are obviously many treatments to help you in the coping with panic attacks.  The absolute best treatment I have found was developed by Barry Joe McDonagh.  He has developed a system that "Breaks the Cycle of Anxiety".  This system is a very workable, easy to use and a relatively inexpensive solution.  He himself was the victim of panic attacks, and has spent many years putting this solution together.  It is definitely worth a look.