Anxiety Attacks
Anxiety attacks are terrifying experiences that seem to strike from nowhere! The sensations can be very sudden and so extreme you think your life is in danger! The feelings are so painful that you dread, maybe more than anything else, having to go through that again. So, you may find yourself on guard every waking moment, scanning situations for danger, so you won’t be caught by another surprise attack. The idea of being trapped by a paralyzing, painful fear is almost too much to handle. Are you dying? Or worse yet, are you crazy? Who can you confide in? What on earth can you do? Are you the only one who feels this way?
Actually, by now you’ve probably heard about panic attacks, or anxiety attacks, and you may already know that they impair the quality of life for over a million people. These attacks are the physical sensations of extreme fear, triggered by an anxious or panicky thought, occurring when the fear reaction is inappropriate because there’s no real danger present. However, after you’ve had this very unpleasant experience, even the slightest physical sensation of anxiety can set off the reaction again, stimulating your automatic nervous system and beginning an ever-increasing cycle of panic, stress, and fear.
The Why’s and Where’s of Anxiety Attacks
Picture the way your body reacts when you are in real danger — in a fire, for example. Your heart starts beating more rapidly, your stomach may tense, you sweat and shake. You have activated the “fight or flight response” which prepares you to battle or to flee from danger. With panic attacks these same reactions occur, but they are triggered even though there is no real danger — they are false alarms. We can’t always discover why this process begins, but typically it starts after an illness, a pregnancy, a drug experience, relationship problems, loss of a loved one, moving your home, or a period of prolonged tension. After this “false alarm” reaction occurs a few times, it may begin to recur in specific situations. The reason this happens is that the site of a former panic attack becomes scary by association.
Let’s explore this process in detail. If you had a recent panic attack in a supermarket and your dominant sensation was a racing heart, just thinking of going back to the supermarket can raise your anxiety level and cause your heart to race. It is not really the market you fear — it’s the likelihood of your having a panic attack while you are there!
You feel vulnerable because of your past experience. However, it’s crucial to understand that what you really have developed is a fear of your own sensations of panic, not of the place itself. This is so important that you may want to write it down on your First Alert Card so you’ll have a concrete reminder as you work to overcome this problem.
Some of the common places associated with panic are crowded places, such as stores, churches, theaters, subways, buses, and restaurants. Panic can come up almost anywhere you feel trapped — at the dentist, a social situation, waiting in a line, in a class, on bridges, in tunnels, cars, sometimes just being at home. The intensity of your fear may vary from day to day, causing you to wonder about your sanity, and creating fluctuations in your ability to face or avoid the situations you dread. Sometimes you can only face these situations with a trusted companion.
For most anxiety sufferers, the intervals between panic attacks are consumed with worry about what might happen (the “what if…” kind of thinking), because it is never easy to tell when the next panic attack may come. Thoughts about the next “surprise attack” are never far away! This “anticipatory” anxiety may become worse as you begin to constantly monitor the physical or mental sensations you associate with panic. In fact, for some people, the anxiety caused by the anticipation of panic is much worse than the anxiety they actually feel in a panic-associated situation. Anticipatory anxiety can lead to years of avoidance behavior, even when actual panic attacks are not occurring or happen only occasionally. In some cases, anticipatory thinking keeps the fear alive by creating anxiety about how you think you might feel in the future.
You may also begin to become fearful of all kinds of sensations and activities you previously experienced as normal. Suddenly, physical sensations associated with exercise, sex, or watching exciting movies may cause these activities to become frightening. This hypervigilance can occur anytime you misinterpret harmless excitement as a predictor of panic.
If you are experiencing anxiety attacks, a thorough medical examination is essential in order to rule out an underlying physical disorder. If you have an examination and are told you are in good health, it’s time to learn to deal with your panic attacks in a new way.
