Symptoms Of A Panic Attack: What To Look For

Symptoms of a Panic Attack

When someone is suffering from panic attacks you can be sure that they are feeling extremely worried about something.Feelings like these are exacerbated because a lot of the time panic attack symptoms copy other severe health conditions such as a heart attack.

In many cases when somebody suffers a panic attack they might actually think they are dying. And even though men and women don't usually die from panic attacks the symptoms are still very severe.

One thing that many people find frightening about panic attacks relates to the speed at which they surface.

Only those people who've experienced a panic attack can understand how scary they really are. View in your mind's eye being overcome by a feeling that is so frightening you can pretty much or maybe even actually feel it. You can't breathe properly, your chest hurts and you can feel your heart pounding and racing. You feel nauseous, dizzy and lightheaded all at once. You change from being too hot or too cold in an instant but when you try to sense whether you are or not, you can't due to the fact your hands are tingling in your fingers are numb.

At the same time this is going on within your body your imagination could be trying to play tricks on you as well - thinking, in one second - that everything going on around you seems like a fantasy and in the next it's become a nightmare and you need to escape -- but how can you get away from yourself? You're frightened for your bodily well-being and at the same time terrified of losing control and maybe possibly dying.On top of that in your lucid moments in between everything else happening you concern yourself with embarrassing yourself in front of everyone around you.

The fact is, is that many people think that once you've had a panic attack its finished. Nothing could be further from the truth simply because most panic attack sufferers are haunted by the fear of having another attack.

Seemingly, once sufferers have had an attack in one place, they can tend to unconsciously blame the place for the attack happening again -- this means that these people will start to avoid certain places and certain situations if a panic attack occurred in such a place or conditions before.

It's often the case that panic attack sufferers go on to develop phobias about these situations.

Panic attacks vary from other types of anxiety disorder mainly because they happened so suddenlyand without manifest cause.. One could be tempted to say that they are unexpected nevertheless, when you consider lots of panic attack sufferers spend time wondering when the next one will happen -- that actually may not be true.What is true though, is that most people who have had one panic attack are very likely to have another one.

For many individuals panic attacks are not the real difficulty as they are more of an outward show at the extreme end of a whole range of symptoms indicating an underlying anxiety disorder.

At this point you may understand that a panic disorder has especially serious impact on the individual's daily life - that is unless that person gets appropriate treatment.

Worldwide panic attacks are a serious health problem. By way of illustration, there is something like 3 million or just about 2% of American adults who suffer from a panic disorder at some point in their lives. As far as panic attacks go, probably the most susceptible age is around about 18 to 19 years i.e. the late teens. The usa is not alone, as these statistics will be very similar in other Western nations such as Australia, Canada and the UK.

It's also possible to have a panic attack while you sleep.. Nocturnal panic attacks -- as these are known -- take place less frequently than daytime ones. Nevertheless, between 40 and 70% of daytime panic attack sufferers will also have attacks in the night.

Additionally many of the other panic attack symptoms such as heart palpitations will greet the waking sufferer.

One good point is that nocturnal panic attacks are typically shorter than daytime ones lasting only around 10 minutes. But when you consider the time it takes to calm down afterwards and then get back to sleep once more, it's a bit more than 10 minutes that's actually lost.Certainly, nocturnal panic attacks will drastically affect the quality and quantity of sleep that the sufferer gets and that will have an impact on the quality of their daily life. And the continuing fatigue will mean that they are even more susceptible to being worried and anxious therefore increasing the chances of another panic attack.

Above all though, remember that the symptoms of a panic attack which include the physical, mental and emotional signs, are simply that just symptoms.

Surprisingly, a lot of people mistakingly try and treat the symptoms instead of dealing with the underlying cause of the problem.

Less seasoned health providers have a tendency to turn to drugs in order to "deal" with these outward problems but as you can imagine this only really deals with the symptoms.

More experienced health professionals, while dealing with the more intrusive symptoms, will also want to home in on the cause of the underlying reason for the anxiety that may be causing the problem. No matter which way you think about it, this is sure to be a superior form of treatment.