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Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Anxiety and Panic Attacks - What it is and How it Manifests


By Mike Bond
I purposely kept this article back, until we'd learned more about how to combat Anxiety and Panic Attacks. To have written this first could have quite understandably been met with the re-action;
"Well, so what? What now? All this sounds very frightening. What do we do if we suffer one of these attacks?"
By explaining it now, we've learned how to handle these horrors and may now sit back and see what used to cause our misery. It isn't too surprising to learn that Panic Attacks are caused by high Anxiety. Well, that's fine, but what's Anxiety?
It's one of the most basic of human emotions, a most unpleasant sensation, but not dangerous by itself. The last two words are important. 'By itself.'
There is this awful temptation to try to defeat Anxiety by drinking, or worse still, taking legal or illegal drugs.
It is true that properly prescribed medications can help a lot, in the short term especially, but of course there's the awful risk of dependency. Alcohol and illegal drugs are a whole different matter. If you're suffering Anxiety and you awake with a hangover, what you considered to be a problem the day before, is now a monumental event. At worst, thoughts of suicide may well be prevalent, so the caveat to all this is three words; don't self medicate. The definition of anxiety is as follows:
A state of apprehension or fear resulting from the anticipation of a real or imagined threat, event or situation.
Unless there's something pretty exceptional about us, we all become anxious sometime in our lives, whether or not we suffer from a condition of Anxiety. In a perfectly balanced mind, one not affected by the symptoms, the person may receive bad and/or upsetting news and become anxious. This is perfectly normal. With a person of this nature, he or she will experience initial anxiety, then worry to a greater of lesser extent, depending on the trigger.
The person who suffers the condition on a regular basis, probably with occasional Panic Attacks thrown in, will be terrified by the experience and suffer symptoms such as blurred vision, dizziness, tingling and feelings of breathlessness.
When people don't understand these sensations, hence the timing of this article, they think either that they're ill or that a serious mental condition has overtaken them. The feeling of loss of control grips them and they become really frightened.
Could one of the root causes of Panic Attacks be the fight or flight response, and is there a connection between this and the sensations you experience during and after an attack?
We'll answer these questions a bit later.
Mike Bond coming back to basics in this article, explaining in part exactly what Anxiety is. Far more may be learned on his Website, Panattack, and make certain you grab your copy of the Free Mini Course which has helped so many people just by itself

2 comments:

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  2. What worries me is that panic attack sufferers may discontinue activities that seem to trigger panic attacks, such as going to the park, driving, riding in elevators, or doing anything that brings on frightening body sensations. While avoidance may temporarily help with the fear of the attack and loss of control, it makes normal life nearly impossible. It also does not stop the Panic attacks from occurring. So that is a proof that it must be dealt with immediately.
    It is not easy and can take long, but we can´t live with it our whole life.
    Kim

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