Drug Free Treatment for Anxiety and Panic Attacks
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Causes of Panic Attacks
The short and obvious answer: panic attacks are caused by high anxiety. But, what exactly is anxiety? Understanding how anxiety crops up will help you defeat panic attacks.
One of the biggest myths surrounding anxiety is that it is harmful and can lead to a number of various life-threatening conditions.
Definition of Anxiety
Anxiety is defined as a state of apprehension or fear resulting from the anticipation of a real or imagined threat, event, or situation. It is one of the most common human emotions experienced by people at some point in their lives.
However, most people who have never experienced a panic attack, or extreme anxiety, fail to realize the terrifying nature of the experience. Extreme dizziness, blurred vision, tingling and feelings of breathlessness--and that’s just the tip of the iceberg!
When these sensations occur and people do not understand why, they feel they have contracted an illness, or a serious mental condition. The threat of losing complete control seems very real and naturally very terrifying.
Fight/Flight Response: One of the root causes of panic attacks?
I am sure most of you have heard of the fight/flight response as an explanation for one of the root causes of panic attacks. Have you made the connection between this response and the unusual sensations you experience during and after a panic attack episode?
Anxiety is a response to a danger or threat. It is so named because all of its effects are aimed toward either fighting or fleeing from the danger. Thus, the sole purpose of anxiety is to protect the individual from harm. This may seem ironic given that you no doubt feel your anxiety is actually causing you great harm…perhaps the most significant of all the causes of panic attacks.
However, the anxiety that the fight/flight response created was vital in the daily survival of our ancient ancestors--when faced with some danger, an automatic response would take over that propelled them to take immediate action such as attack or run. Even in today’s hectic world, this is still a necessary mechanism. It comes in useful when you must respond to a real threat within a split second.
Anxiety is a built-in mechanism to protect us from danger. Interestingly, it is a mechanism that protects but does not harm--an important point that will be elaborated upon later.
The Physical Manifestations of a Panic Attack: Other pieces of the puzzle to understand the causes of panic attacks. Nervousness and Chemical Effects…
When confronted with danger, the brain sends signals to a section of the nervous system. It is this system that is responsible for gearing the body up for action and also calms the body down and restores equilibrium. To carry out these two vital functions, the autonomic nervous system has two subsections, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
Although I don’t want to become too “scientific,” having a basic understanding of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system will help you understand the causes of panic attacks.
The sympathetic nervous system is the one we tend to know all too much about because it primes our body for action, readies us for the “fight or flight” response, while the parasympathetic nervous system is the one we love dearly as it serves as our restoring system, which returns the body to its normal state.
When either of these systems is activated, they stimulate the whole body, which has an “all or nothing” effect. This explains why when a panic attack occurs, the individual often feels a number of different sensations throughout the body.
The sympathetic system is responsible for releasing the adrenaline from the adrenal glands on the kidneys. These are small glands located just above the kidneys. Less known, however, is that the adrenal glands also release adrenaline, which functions as the body’s chemical messengers to keep the activity going. When a panic attack begins, it does not switch off as easily as it is turned on. There is always a period of what would seem increased or continued anxiety, as these messengers travel throughout the body. Think of them as one of the physiological causes of panic attacks, if you will.
After a period of time, the parasympathetic nervous system gets called into action. Its role is to return the body to normal functioning once the perceived danger is gone. The parasympathetic system is the system we all know and love, because it returns us to a calm relaxed state.
When we engage in a coping strategy that we have learned, for example, a relaxation technique, we are in fact willing the parasympathetic nervous system into action. A good thing to remember is that this system will be brought into action at some stage whether we will it or not. The body cannot continue in an ever-increasing spiral of anxiety. It reaches a point where it simply must kick in, relaxing the body. This is one of the many built-in protection systems our bodies have for survival.
You can do your best with worrying thoughts, keeping the sympathetic nervous system going, but eventually it stops. In time, it becomes a little smarter than us, and realizes that there really is no danger. Our bodies are incredibly intelligent--modern science is always discovering amazing patterns of intelligence that run throughout the cells of our body. Our body seems to have infinite ways of dealing with the most complicated array of functions we take for granted. Rest assured that your body’s primary goal is to keep you alive and well.
Not so convinced?
Try holding your breath for as long as you can. No matter how strong your mental will is, it can never override the will of the body. This is good news--no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that you are gong to die from a panic attack, you won’t. Your body will override that fear and search for a state of balance. There has never been a reported incident of someone dying from a panic attack.
Remember this next time you have a panic attack; he causes of panic attacks cannot do you any physical harm. Your mind may make the sensations continue longer than the body intended, but eventually everything will return to a state of balance. In fact, balance (homeostasis) is what our body continually strives for.
The interference for your body is nothing more than the sensations of doing rigorous exercise. Our body is not alarmed by these symptoms. Why should it be? It knows its own capability. It’s our thinking minds that panic, which overreact and scream in sheer terror! We tend to fear the worst and exaggerate our own sensations. A quickened heart beat becomes a heart attack. An overactive mind seems like a close shave with schizophrenia. Is it our fault? Not really--we are simply diagnosing from poor information.
Cardiovascular Effects Activity in the sympathetic nervous system increases our heartbeat rate, speeds up the blood flow throughout the body, ensures all areas are well supplied with oxygen and that waste products are removed. This happens in order to prime the body for action.
A fascinating feature of the “fight or flight” mechanism is that blood (which is channelled from areas where it is currently not needed by a tightening of the blood vessels) is brought to areas where it is urgently needed.
For example, should there be a physical attack, blood drains from the skin, fingers, and toes so that less blood is lost, and is moved to “active areas” such as the thighs and biceps to help the body prepare for action.
This is why many feel numbness and tingling during a panic attack-often misinterpreted as some serious health risk-such as the precursor to a heart attack. Interestingly, most people who suffer from anxiety often feel they have heart problems. If you are really worried that such is the case with your situation, visit your doctor and have it checked out. At least then you can put your mind at rest.
Respiratory Effects
One of the scariest effects of a panic attack is the fear of suffocating or smothering. It is very common during a panic attack to feel tightness in the chest and throat. I’m sure everyone can relate to some fear of losing control of your breathing. From personal experience, anxiety grows from the fear that your breathing itself would cease and you would be unable to recover. Can a panic attack stop our breathing? No.
A panic attack is associated with an increase in the speed and depth of breathing. This has obvious importance for the defense of the body since the tissues need to get more oxygen to prepare for action. The feelings produced by this increase in breathing, however, can include breathlessness, hyperventilation, sensations of choking or smothering, and even pains or tightness in the chest. The real problem is that these sensations are alien to us, and they feel unnatural.
Having experienced extreme panic attacks myself, I remember that on many occasions, I would have this feeling that I couldn’t trust my body to do the breathing for me, so I would have to manually take over and tell myself when to breathe in and when to breathe out. Of course, this didn’t suit my body’s requirement of oxygen and so the sensations would intensify--along with the anxiety. It was only when I employed the technique I will describe for you later, did I let the body continue doing what it does best--running the whole show.
Importantly, a side-effect of increased breathing, (especially if no actual activity occurs) is that the blood supply to the head is actually decreased. While such a decrease is only a small amount and is not at all dangerous, it produces a variety of unpleasant but harmless symptoms that include dizziness, blurred vision, confusion, sense of unreality, and hot flushes.
Other Physical Effects of Panic Attacks:
Now that we’ve discussed some of the primary physiological causes of panic attacks, there are a number of other effects that are produced by the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, none of which are in any way harmful.
For example, the pupils widen to let in more light, which may result in blurred vision, or “seeing” stars, etc. There is a decrease in salivation, resulting in dry mouth. There is decreased activity in the digestive system, which often produces nausea, a heavy feeling in the stomach, and even constipation. Finally, many of the muscle groups tense up in preparation for “fight or flight” and this results in subjective feelings of tension, sometimes extending to actual aches and pains, as well as trembling and shaking.
Overall, the fight/flight response results in a general activation of the whole bodily metabolism. Thus, one often feels hot and flushed and, because this process takes a lot of energy, the person generally feels tired and drained.
Mental Manifestations: Are the causes of panic attacks all in my head? is a question many people wonder to themselves.
The goal of the fight/flight response is making the individual aware of the potential danger that may be present. Therefore, when activated, the mental priority is placed upon searching the surroundings for potential threats. In this state one is highly-strung, so to speak. It is very difficult to concentrate on any one activity, as the mind has been trained to seek all potential threats and not to give up until the threat has been identified. As soon as the panic hits, many people look for the quick and easiest exit from their current surroundings, such as by simply leaving the bank queue and walking outside. Sometimes the anxiety can heighten, if we perceive that leaving will cause some sort of social embarrassment.
If you have a panic attack while at the workplace but feel you must press on with whatever task it is you are doing, it is quite understandable that you would find it very hard to concentrate. It is quite common to become agitated and generally restless in such a situation. Many individuals I have worked with who have suffered from panic attacks over the years indicated that artificial light--such as that which comes from computer monitors and televisions screens--can can be one of the causes of panic attacks by triggering them or worsen a panic attack, particularly if the person is feeling tired or run down.
This is worth bearing in mind if you work for long periods of time on a computer. Regular break reminders should be set up on your computer to remind you to get up from the desk and get some fresh air when possible.
In other situations, when during a panic attack an outside threat cannot normally be found, the mind turns inwards and begins to contemplate the possible illness the body or mind could be suffering from. This ranges from thinking it might have been something you ate at lunch, to the possibility of an oncoming cardiac arrest.
The burning question is: Why is the fight/flight response activated during a panic attack even when there is apparently nothing to be frightened of?
Upon closer examination of the causes of panic attacks, it would appear that what we are afraid of are the sensations themselves--we are afraid of the body losing control. These unexpected physical symptoms create the fear or panic that something is terribly wrong. Why do you experience the physical symptoms of the fight/flight response if you are not frightened to begin with? There are many ways these symptoms can manifest themselves, not just through fear.
For example, it may be that you have become generally stressed for some reason in your life, and this stress results in an increase in the production of adrenaline and other chemicals, which from time to time, would produce symptoms….and which you perceive as the causes of panic attacks.
This increased adrenaline can be maintained chemically in the body, even after the stress has long gone. Another possibility is diet, which directly affects our level of stress. Excess caffeine, alcohol, or sugar is known for causing stress in the body, and is believed to be one of the contributing factors of the causes of panic attacks (Chapter 5 gives a full discussion on diet and its importance).
Unresolved emotions are often pointed to as possible trigger of panic attacks, but it is important to point out that eliminating panic attacks from your life does not necessarily mean analyzing your psyche and digging into your subconscious. The “One Move” technique will teach you to deal with the present moment and defuse the attack along with removing the underlying anxiety that sparks the initial anxiety.
Learn more
http://www.panicportal.com
Barry Joe McDonagh is an international panic disorder coach. His informative site on all issues related to panic and anxiety attacks can be found here: http://www.panicportal.com
This article is copywritten material
The Enemy Of Our Imagination
People who experience panic attacks will often say that they feel out of control as soon as the panic is in full swing. Christian Nevell Bovee once wrote:
“Panic is a sudden desertion of us, and a going over to the enemy of our imagination.”
Doesn’t that sum it up well?
A confident self assured person can suddenly feel powerless and vulnerable as soon as the panic manifests. As the bodily sensations race, the mind jumps from logic and reason to wild fears fueled by the imagination.
The hardest part for most people to get their heads around is why they feel so suddenly powerless during a panic attack?
The automatic reaction for most to the sensations of a panic attack are to fight against it. To shut it down and end it as soon as possible. Coping techniques like deep breathing and distraction are mildly effective at best. When these techniques fail to get results, that is when the person really leaps over to ‘the enemy of their imagination’.
It goes something like this:
“I used all my coping techniques but I still feel very anxious, in fact it may be getting worse!
“What if this keeps getting worse and no help can get to me here?”
Where people run with this type of thinking their imagination will continue to escalate the fear, leaving them feeling more and more vulnerable and out of control.
The secret to regain control and come back to yourself, is to learn how to respond to the panic in an appropriate manner.
The solution is to work with the bodily sensations rather than against them.
Let me give you a small example. If you were sitting on a train and started to feel sensations that indicated the beginning of a panic attack, instead of trying to stop the experience do the opposite.
Acknowledge that you are safe, label the sensations and then tell the sensations that scare you, to get worse. If you are sweating tell your body to sweat more, if your heart is racing, tell it to race faster.
Move into the experience rather than against it.
The real panic only begins as soon as you hand over reason and control to your imagination. By moving into the experience voluntarily, you become the decision maker and therefore retain control. If you’re going to have a panic attack it is going to happen on your terms.
You empower yourself because you are directing the whole experience not handing “over to the enemy of our imagination.”
Learn more about this approach and how to apply it to various manifestations of panic and general anxiety.
Here is a small sample of how Panic Away has helped others:
…learned more from reading your program than I did from all the psychologists and other practitioners I had seen in the 25 years- I must tell you that out of all the items you can purchase regarding anxiety related products on the internet, I learned more from reading your program than I did from all the psychologists and other practitioners I had seen in the 25 years that I’ve had this condition.
I had been on Xanax and Klonopin for about 10 years, but this December, I decided to withdraw from it thinking I didn’t need the pills anymore according to some of the programs I ordered claiming “miracle cures”. That’s when all my symptoms started again. I felt as if I had wasted the past 20 years trying to get better.That’s when I started searching the web for home based “cures”. I ordered so many programs I started to get confused from too much conflicting advice.
Also, I was promised support but I am still waiting replies from some of the more expensive programs! You are a true gentleman, and I am going to post a very positive feedback on a website you might be familiar about called: Tapir? Talk to ya, Andy
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…I DEBATED ORDERING YOUR PROGRAM BECAUSE I HAVE SPENT APPROX. $8,000 IN THE LAST 5 YEARS, I RAN ACROSS YOUR PROGRAM SUNDAY, FEB. 5th. I DEBATED ORDERING YOUR PROGRAM BECAUSE I HAVE SPENT APPROX. $8,000 IN THE LAST 5 YEARS OF MY LIFE TRYING EVERYTHING FROM PANIC SUPPORT CLASSES, MEDICATION, COUNSELING AND THE LIST GOES ON, ALL TO RID MYSELF OF PANIC ATTACKS. SOMETHING INSIDE ME SAID, JUST KEEP TRYING, SO I DID. AFTER 5 YEARS OF OF LIVING MY LIFE WITH THE WORLD ON MY SHOULDERS I AM EXCITED TO SAY THAT I AM NOW PANIC FREE. AFTER ONE TIME OF APPLYING YOUR ONE MOVE TECHNIQUE, I AM A NEW PERSON. ONE OF MY MANY FEARS THAT I DEVELOPED WAS DRIVING. AFTER READING YOUR PROGRAM AT 12.30 AT NIGHT I WROTE DOWN SOME QUICK NOTES FROM YOUR “ONE MOVE TECH.” I RAN OUT OF MY HOUSE AND DROVE TOWARD THE DARKEST SCARIEST ROAD WHERE NOBODY WAS NEAR BY. THIS WOULD DEFINITLY BRING ON AN FULL PANIC ATTACK, WHICH IT DID. WHILE LETTING MYSELF FEEL THE EMOTIONS RUN THROUGH ME, I DID EXACTLY WHAT YOU TOLD ME TO DO, I WAS SCARED AS HELL BUT STOOD MY GROUND.
I INSTANTLY CALMED AND EVEN TRIED TO BRING THE ATTACK BACK ON, BUT COULD NOT. I LITTERALLY LAUGHED OUT LOUD AND SAT IN MY TRUCK AMAZED. AFTER ALL THIS TIME THAT WAS ALL I HAD TO DO. THE COMPLETE OPPOSIT OF EVERYTHING THAT I WAS TOLD. THIS WHOLE WEEK I HAVE DRIVEN WHERE EVER I WANTED,AT ANY TIME OF THE DAY. I AM SO GLAD I FOUND YOUR PROGRAM. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR RESEARCH, TIME, AND DEDICATION SO THAT PEOPLE LIKE US CAN NOW LIVE A NORMAL AND HAPPY LIFE. JACKSON CA, AARON ==================================
…I prayed to God to show me what to do I experienced my first panic attack in July of this year and ended up going to the hospital by ambulance thinking I was having a stroke or heart attack! I have had a bunch of attacks since then. Monday morning I awoke to an immediate attack and prayed to God to show me what to do. To make a long story short,I was led to your website but was afraid it was like the other ones where they try to sell you their products. However, your introductory information really spoke to me and I decided to take a chance. I read your book and it gave me the tools I was searching for to deal with my attacks. I could tell immediately that you have suffered from panic attacks yourself because you spoke with authority that can only have come from having dealt with the terrors yourself.
I am 42 years of age and have been noticing the psychological effects of perimenopause (one of which is panic attacks in my case). Thanks again!! Sincerely, Cynthia
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To Learn more about Panic Away:
Barry Joe McDonagh
All material provided in these emails are for informational or educational purposes only. No content is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Consult your physician regarding the applicability of any opinions or recommendations with respect to your symptoms or medical condition.
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