How To Treat Anxiety Disorder And Panic Attacks

I prefer to talk about most anxiety states as an emotional disturbance rather than as a mental health issue or a disorder. In most instances, people with anxiety have become habituated to reacting to certain things with a response of intense fear. That's what I call an inappropriate emotional response and once you realize that that is the basis of your anxiety, you are well on the path to eliminating anxiety and panic attacks from your life.

Anxiety can be mild or so totally disabling that the person is confined to her or his home. All forms of anxiety can be extremely frightening to those who experience it frequently, but many individuals have found comfort in the fact that anxiety disorders can be treated.

Anxiety, usually called anxiety disorder, is most upsetting when it manifests itself as panic attacks. As the name implies, these are a sudden flow of overwhelming anxiety and fear, sometimes amounting to terror, which takes over the individual's body. During a panic attack, the individual will experience a pounding heart rate, difficulty to breathing and may also experience dizziness and a feeling of nausea. In some cases, the person having an attack may also experience a feeling that they are going crazy or even dying. If left untreated, these episodes of panic can result in panic disorder and other conditions which can make it extremely difficult for the individual to enjoy everyday life. However, effective treatment is available, and as with other conditions, the sooner you seek treatment, the better.

In most cases, an episode of panic will strike out of the blue, without any warning. Often, there seems to be no reason for the panic attacks. They can occur at times where you're feeling relaxed or even asleep. For many people who experience anxiety, an attack will commonly occur when you are away from home as this is when you will feel less safe and secure. Symptoms can present abruptly and can last for up to thirty minutes. A typical attack of panic fuelled by adrenaline will usually see the symptoms reach their full potential within ten minutes.

Symptoms of a panic episode
The main symptoms are:
-Shortness of breath

-Heart palpitations (often the person will think they're experiencing a heart attack)

-Sweating, Nausea, Trembling/shaking

-A feeling of being detached from your body/ out of body experience; and

-A fear or feeling that you are dying

Someone who has experienced one or two panic attacks will continue to live their life without any further attacks. However, in other cases, people find that through their panic attacks they have entered what we call the panic attack cycle. That cycle includes:

- Anticipating, expecting that a particular place or activity will lead to an attack because it has in the past;

1. Worry which accompanies that anticipation. The worry or fear is about experiencing another attack; and

2. Not surprisingly, the anticipation brings on the feelings of panic and the person wants to escape that intense adrenaline-fuelled fear.

3. After escaping, or sometimes just avoiding, the person feels stupid and blames herself/himself for being 'crazy'.

4. Soon merely thinking about things that have caused an episode of panic in the past is enough to generate those feelings.

5. Avoidance becomes the way to cope because the person is afraid of feeling such out-of-control terror.

Agoraphobia
When someone allows that fear of the next attack of fear to take hold, they can develop agoraphobia which is derived from two Greek words 'agora' marketplace and 'fovos' fear. It's not literally that you fear only going to the market, but the underlying sense is an intense fear about being away from home. People with agoraphobia fear having a panic attack in places where they've had them in the past, and where they feel it's difficult to escape the situation. Places such as concert halls, malls, sports stadiums, going to school meetings, attending lectures at College - these can all trigger fear. It is for this reason that people with agoraphobia choose to remain at home as much as possible. Home is where they feel most safe.

However frightening it may be for someone to experience any of these conditions, there is security in knowing that they can be treated. The most effective treatment is called Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT). It works by focusing on the thinking patterns which trigger anxiety including panic attacks. This helps the person to look at their fears more closely, and to realize that those fears are in fact, only thoughts. Once that is genuinely understood, the therapist can work to help the person change their reaction to those thoughts.

If you currently suffer from anxiety or panic attacks, you are not alone. Nor are panic attacks something you have to endure for the rest of your life. There are many proven ways to treat all forms of anxiety disorder. By learning about the condition itself and the reasons why you experience the panic attacks, you'll be on the journey out of anxiety and panic attacks back to a normal life once again.