Panic Attacks Essays - Psychology, RTT, Psychiatry, Emotions, Fear

Panic Attacks Panic attacks involve sudden feelings of terror that strike without warning. These episodes can occur at any time, even during sleep. People experiencing a panic attack may believe they are having a heart attack or they are dying or going crazy. The fear and terror that a person experiences during a panic attack are not in proportion to the true situation and may be unrelated to what is happening around them. Panic attacks are generally brief, lasting less than 10 minutes, although some of the symptoms may persist for a longer time. People who have had one panic attack are at greater risk for having subsequent panic attacks than those who have never experienced a panic attack. When the attacks occur repeatedly, and there is worry about having more episodes, a person is considered to have a condition known as panic disorder. Behaving in an apprehensive manner produces the physiological, psychological, and emotional state of anxiety. When we behave apprehensively (worried, fretful, concerned, afraid), the body activates the stress response, which secretes stress hormones into the bloodstream where they travel to targeted spots in the body to bring about specific changes that enhance the body's ability to deal with danger. The stress response is often referred to as the fight or flight response because of how it equips the body to either fight with or flee from danger. When we are mildly concerned (worried, afraid), the stress response produces a mild reaction in the body. When we are greatly concerned/worried/afraid, the stress response produces a dramatic reaction in the body. Since the stress response is directly proportional to the degree of worry, a panic attack and its symptoms are generally the result of serious worry, concern, and fear. So it's the ongoing serious worry that generally causes panic attacks. These types of attacks are called voluntary panic attacks: when our worry has activated a dramatic stress response reaction. Moreover, persistently elevated stress can also cause a panic attack. These types of attacks are called involuntary panic attacks, meaning that the body has involuntarily triggered an attack all by itself due to being overly stressed. The most common form of panic attacks is the voluntary panic attacks type with the involuntary panic attacks type being less common. Involuntary panic attacks typically are those that occur out of the blue' and seemingly for no apparent reason. Voluntary panic attacks are always preceded by worry, such as that caused by imagining something horrible could happeneven though you may not be aware that you worried prior to the panic attack. Since panic attacks are either caused by overly anxious thinking or an overly stressed body, which we call stress-response hyperstimulation, we can stop them by eliminating our overly anxious thinking and by reducing the body's stress.For example, once you notice you are scaring yourself with anxious thinking, you can change your thinking to calming thoughts, which will stop stress responses and their physiological, psychological, and emotional effects. As you calm yourself down, your body will follow by stopping the flow of stress hormones. As stress hormones are used up or expelled, the sensations, symptoms, and feelings of panic will subsidein time. What is panic disorder? Most people will experience at least one or two panic attacks in their lifetime. This is normal. Panic disorder occurs when panic attacks occur more frequently and interfere with a normal lifestyle. In other words, when panic attacks cause regular disruption to a normal lifestyle, it is considered as Panic Disorder (PD). According to the Canadian Statistics website: "Panic disorder is diagnosed if the individual has recurrent panic attacks (minimum four in a four-week period), and at least one of the attacks is accompanied by one or more physical symptoms, including persistent concern about having another attack, worry about the implication or consequences of the attack (i.e., having a heart attack), and/or a significant change in behaviour due to the attacks, such as quitting a job.7 In addition, the panic attacks cannot be due to the physiological effects of a substance or another general medical condition."[1] It's important to keep in mind that Panic Disorder should NOT be equated with having a medical, biological, chemical, or genetic condition. Panic Disorder simply