Reviewing Anxiety Panic Attacks

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July 11th, 2009 anxman Leave a comment Go to comments

Sometimes anxiety panic attacks begin in the mind, with a certain thought that escalates into a physical response, such as a rapid heart rate, chest pain, difficulty breathing, butterflies in the stomach, dizziness, sweating, nausea and uncontrollable dread. As hormones and body chemicals, like adrenaline, epinephrine, cortical, norepinephrine and glycogen flood the cells, the individual feels the “fight or flight” urge. The first step toward quelling these symptoms of anxiety attacks is to truly understand what it means to have a panic attack disorder and then to learn behavioral tactics to change one’s way of thinking.

Many Americans wonder what the difference between healthy worry and chronic worry is. On one hand, California writer Dr. Beverly Potter explains, “Think of it as a mental fire drill, a ‘thinking through’ of things that potentially might happen. It’s good to think over what could happen and to have a contingency plan. That is what productive and effective people do.” Yet, on the other hand, panic anxiety worrying can become a kind of “stuckness,” where worrywarts “get stuck identifying danger as they immerse themselves in a dread associated with the threat, which may be real or — more likely — imagined.”

Anxiety panic attacks researchers say that worry begets worry in most panic attack anxiety cases. Once the first panic attack and out-of-control feeling occurs, the worrywart fears another future attack. In one case, a woman heard a new story about a home invasion over 200 miles from her home and she stayed up all night long, fearing that someone might break in while she was asleep. The anxiety made her feel as though she was having a heart attack, she later recalled. If she could have stopped the worry cycle before it escalated so much, she might have been able to calm down and sleep after all.

The wise Dali Lama once said, “If there is a solution to a problem, there is no need to worry. And if there is no solution, there is no need to worry.” He says that, rather than drift into anxiety panic attacks, individuals must focus on the solution, not the problem, and sometimes accept that there may be no solution. A common Christian prayer may help people reaffirm this: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I cannot accept, and the wisdom to know the difference.”