When you're in the middle of a anxiety or panic attack, the last thing you will think to do is laugh. However, picturing yourself experiencing out of control laughter can help to ease your panic attack and may also assist you to stop them. This natural coping method allows you to manage your anxiety or panic attack without medications.
Visualization, the act of imaging yourself in a certain circumstance, is an outstanding tool for managing your thoughts. Professional athletes utilize it to train their mind to improve in sports. By mentally stepping through the moves involved in an event, their games often make measurable improvements.
Studies frequently demonstrate that areas of the brain cannot distinguish the difference between real and imagined activities. When you imagine yourself experiencing a great time, you will begin having a good time. When you picture yourself having an horrible panic or anxiety attack, you are much more likely to do just that.
A lot of visualization methods involve calm imagery to soothe the mind and regain control of panic, but picturing something amusing may be more effective because of its greater intensity. Uncontrollable laughter takes over the whole nervous system, stimulating a state of calm,pleasure and well-being.
Laughter has a lot of healthful blessings for your mind and body. It will help replace anxious and fearful emotions with peaceful thoughts and relaxation. Laughter greatly eases tension and allevieates the tension you feel when panic or anxiety begins to set in.
Visualization has been proven to stop panic attacks, making them far less potent and frequent. If you can imagine yourself in a state of uncontrollable laughter, you break the pattern of your emotions and short circuit the stream of negative emotions activating the panic attack. The pictured laughing brings down the cortisol level in your brain the same way that real laughter does. This coping tactic is useful even if you do not feel joyful. Just the mental image alone will parallel the healthy effects of real laughing.
If you are unable to bring up with an picture of you laughing uncontrollably, think back to a time of when you did. Remember what happened that caused you to laugh. Give yourself permission to mentally to go back to that place and giggle again.
You can also get a dose of beneficial laughter from DVDs or television. There are many internet radio stations with comedy programs or you can visit a comedians web site and listen to or watch clips. Visit YouTube and search for "humorous" videos.
Sometimes you just need to fake it. Forcing yourself to laugh if you begin to feel fear or apprehension may lead to real laughter simply because it is so incongruent. You might find yourself giggling because you are laughing during a panic or anxiety attack, one of the least humorous incidents that will ever happen over your lifetime. Your ability to learn how to laugh may help you ease your anxiety and significantly lessen the frequency and severity of your panic attacks.
Learn more at:
http://anxiety-and-panic-attack-treatment.com
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http://www.squidoo.com/Anxiety-and-Panic-Attack-Treatment
