Ending Panic Attacks

Around 20% of adults experience a panic attack during their lifetime. It is common for those who suffer from panic attacks to not seek treatment. Interestingly, most people who suffer from panic attacks are known to have had their first in their late teenage years. This could have been brought on by stress, financial problems, or many frustrating issues like this. The female population is statistically proven to suffer more commonly from the issue of panic attacks. Panic attacks are known to occur suddenly, and the process can be very frightening, and in some cases can last several minutes in duration.

It is wise if you are unsure if you have had a panic attack to seek advice from your Doctor who will rule out other potential problems such as hyperthyroidism. Other problems can bring on a panic attack. These problems could be something such as having to walk on stage to collect your reward in front of a large audience, or perhaps giving a speech in front of many people. In this instance the panic attack is predictable and happens in relationship to a known event. An event that can bring on panic attacks is usually a phobic that is specific to the sufferer. For example, you may have a fear of spiders (arachnophobia) and on your way home you walk around the corner and are faced with a massive cobweb with a spider in the middle of it.

Panic attacks can be treated with a number of approaches such as education, medication, cognitive and behavioural interventions. Generally the prognosis is good with a person who is motivated to change. If you are seeking treatment it can be useful to record the severity and frequency with which you experience panic attacks and note how it impacts on your life - a good thing to do is to write down a small list of all the things you tend to avoid taking part in or doing and why you don't like doing it. Understanding this helps give an idea on the affect anxiety has on your life. One of the problems with the experience of panic attacks is that symptoms can be misinterpreted as being more serious than they actually are. This leads to the symptoms becoming more threatening and when experienced they can trigger the whole anxiety response. It is your thoughts, more precisely what you think about an event that causes elevated anxiety, not the event alone. Some people find themselves calling an ambulance because they think they are having a heart attack when in actual fact it is a panic attack being experienced. In several cases, people have died from thinking they were "only" experiencing a panic attack, when in term, it was a heart attack. This is why it is important to seek medical attention even if you think it is "just" a panic attack.