Spook Away Your Panic Attacks |
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| It’s October. Devil’s Night and Halloween are coming soon. Ghosts, goblins, and witches decorate trees and windows and spook houses are cropping up for fun scares. When we want to be scared and expect it, these times can be great. When the spook thoughts are within you, however, come when you least expect them, and scare the daylights out of you, this can bring major havoc to your daily living. Panic Attacks are spooky events that can be spooked away for good when diagnosed and treated. | ||
| Many people come to my office and to offices of psychotherapists with complaints of having a fear of dying with shortness of breath, butterflies in the stomach, a feeling of needing to flee the scene of the place in which symptoms occur, and a wish to avoid going back to the place or situation in which the panic first struck. Many others do not get to therapy and may be repeat emergency room visitors with extreme fear that they are having a heart attack, dying, or are going crazy. It is imperative that when there are symptoms of dizziness, shortness of breath, hyperventilation, feeling smothered, palpitations, dyspnea, difficulty catching one’s breath, sweating, choking, numbness in the hands or feet, hot and cold flashes, chest pain or discomfort, trembling or shaking, one must rule out a medical condition. A call to your physician or an emergency room visit may be lifesaving if one truly is having a heart attack. Ask your physician to describe symptoms of heart problems to help you better distinguish between the two conditions. It is better to error on the side of caution and get help for a medical condition than to assume it is emotional. | ||
| Once you have been medically cleared, you may find out that you are one of the 10% of the population with panic attacks (3 times more common in women than in men and very often found in patients with mytrovalve prolapse). Panic attacks are true if they start out in a non-life-threatening situation and do not come following marked physical exertion. They also must not arise out of exposure to some stimulus that is phobic (i.e. A fear of snakes to which you are exposed). They just seem to happen out of the blue and occur frequently enough to have at least three attacks within a three-week time frame. Along with major fear or apprehension, you must have at least four of the symptoms stated above. Finally, the fear of having an attack in front of others can lead one to start avoiding places in which the panic has set in or might set in. The more places that get avoided, the more disabling the condition. If you do anything to avoid situations that you think may elicit the panic, you could eventually become agoraphobic (afraid to leave your home). Early intervention is important to nip these spooky attacks in the bud. | ||
| The first part of treatment is the diagnosis. Once you know you have panic attacks, you can be safe to know that you will NOT die from the panic. You can recognize that you are one of many very curable patients with this problem. You will learn that panic itself can be very short-lived if you think certain things and use reassuring self-talk to stop it in its tracks. What goes up does come down. Panic can only be intense for a while. It may seem like forever, but it usually subsides within a minute or two. If you spook yourself with thoughts like, “I am going to die”, “I wonder who saw me panic?” “What if it happens at work?,” “My boss will know I am nuts,” etc., you will surely escalate your fears. Most of the time, it is the fear of the fear itself that worsens this problem. | ||
| A good therapist will help you learn better self-talk and some coping strategies for calming down the spook thoughts and the panic such as breathing techniques, an awareness of your surroundings, and helpful cognitions. Also, the panic itself is a physiological response to an emotional fear or problem that you may have no conscious awareness of. You will only feel the anxiety. This physiological response (the symptoms described) is often treated by physicians and psychiatrists with a drug call Xanax or with other anxiolytics. This may be helpful if your symptoms are so severe that it is disruptive. My opinion, as with many of my colleagues, is to give the client skills and knowledge quickly so that they can feel competent to manage and use the panic without medications that can eventually be addictive. The panic itself can be the best help in identifying the psychological triggers and patterns that underlie the panic disorder. | ||
| The anxiety is much like a car computer on the dashboard that signals when something is wrong and needs attention. I have come to like the panic…it tell clients that something needs attention in their emotional realm. With the help of a therapist, you can figure out the source of the problem and get rid of panic or calm it down to a very bearable proportion. Without talking therapy, you may wish to stay on medication, which will rid you of those annoying symptoms, but the medication will mask the problem and not allow you to resolve the source of it. | ||
| For more help, contact the Anxiety Disorders Association of America at 301 231-9350 or the Michigan Psychological Association in Farmington Hills for a referral or your local physician. |
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This article was written by Dr. Laurel A. Sills, a Fully Licensed Clinical Psychologist (since 1987) and Life Coach. She provides direct, down-to-earth, short-term therapy with long-term results. She is passionate in her work and will help you stay motivated to change your life with regular commitment to changing habits in thinking and behaving. See her website at: www.DrLSills.com or www.BuildAStrongerYou.com |
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Copyright 2006© Laurel A. Sills, Psy.D. All rights reserved Back to Articles |