Anxiety Attacks
Anxiety attacks or Panic attacks?
These terms are often used interchangeably, but their meaning is actually very different. As a matter of fact, “anxiety attacks” is not a proper scientific term, but it is used casually to describe a specific sub-type of panic attacks in which panic seems to arise with no external cues.
Technically speaking, an anxiety attack is actually a “Cued Panic Attack“. In simple terms, this is how both phenomena compare to one another:
Anxiety Attacks:
- Triggered directly by a stressor
- Provoke fear and apprehension
- Tend to cease when stressor fades
Panic attacks:
- No apparent cause; often feel random
- Cause utter terror and hopelessness
- More intense and longer-lasting
As you can see, what people usually refer to as “anxiety attacks” are actually milder forms of panic attacks. Furthermore, there’s another crucial distinction: whereas panic attacks strike at random (which makes them harder to manage and deal with), anxiety attacks always arise in reaction to a stressor like an event, situation, person, thought or anything else that for some reason makes you feel extremely uncomfortable.
This distinction is rather important, since you can effectively learn to control and even avoid your anxiety attacks by understanding which stressors usually trigger your distress.
Common stressors of anxiety attacks
There are many different kinds of stressors, which normally surface when you’re feeling overwhelmed, misunderstood, unhappy, oppressed and unfortunate or experiencing other negative emotions or events. All the while, these stressors can be boiled down to two main “flavors:” fears and worries. Let’s see some examples:
Fear-related stressors: spiders, thieves, storms, cats, heights, and sickness… just to name a few. Anything you’re particularly fearful of can become a stressor that ignites your anxiety.
Worry-related stressors: bills, relationships, family, children, school, work. Anything that you’re prone to worrying about compulsively might become a stressor that fuels your anxiety.
As you can see, some of these things you can avoid, others you can’t. Truth be told, you should never really avoid your fears or worries because that’s a recipe for disaster. Doing so will actually empower the negativity engulfing you. If you focus on managing your anxiety, you will find it much simpler than if you tried to either eradicate or avoid it.
What can you do when faced with distress?
Think about it for a second: what do you usually do when faced with something that provokes fear or worrying? If you’re like most people, then you likely sway between extremes; you either avoid the source of disturbance or struggle with it head-on.
Understanding is the key. Only after you understand your stressors, do you stand a chance of minimizing their effect. For example, let’s imagine you’re walking down the street one day, and you start feeling distressed. Your heart is pounding and your perspiration is getting out of control. You feel as though you’re being followed and something bad must be about take place.
“What is really happening, here?” – That’s the question you need to ask yourself. You need to look beyond the discomfort and the stress, and try to understand what’s making you feel that way. It could be something obvious such as walking through a “bad” neighborhood, or it could be something elusive: maybe you just realized you’re carrying your paycheck, and then you started thinking that if someone stole your wallet you would be in a really terrible situation.
Only when you understand what’s driving the stress can you deal with it. If you’re fearful specifically because it’s a bad neighborhood, you can simply get a cab or take another route. If you’re worried that you may lose your paycheck, you can just hide it inside your sock (or somewhere that thieves would not check). In either case, you need to take action to fix the source of distress, rather than its effects.
You need to watch your train of thought closely
When trying to deal with anxiety attacks, it’s of utmost important to stay tuned to your sources of acute stress: things that make you lose your calm and sense of perspective. When trying to understand your stressors, it will be a much easier process when you get in the habit of watching your thoughts.
Strive for awareness of your own mind: can you remember what you were thinking earlier this morning? One hour ago? What you were just thinking while reading this article? Most people actually do not pay much attention to their own train of thought. And that’s a shame, since it leaves much room for those pesky negative thought patterns to intrude, unannounced and unsuspected of, your well-being.
This typical absentmindedness can be particularly troublesome for anxiety sufferers, who usually have various stressors lurking among regular thoughts, slipping by undetected and causing all kinds of discomfort, even inducing anxiety attacks.
Further advice on dealing with anxiety attacks
Try this simple exercise: when you feel you’re about to have an anxiety attack, take a deep breath and focus on what’s making you experience this discomfort. While doing so, try to remember exactly what you were just thinking.
More than likely, you will realize that a single thought was all it took to trigger the chain reaction which culminated in an anxiety episode. Weed out this thought and take note of it for future surprised with how this is actually so much more effective than trying to push away your anxiousness with force.
While extremely important, being aware of your thoughts isn’t nearly enough to stop those thoughts from arising – even though it’s a step in the right direction. In order to increase your well-being in general and improve your internal dialog, you should consider changing your diet, avoiding stimulants, learning coping techniques, and proper breathing. Together with your own awareness, these techniques may become your strongest allies in averting anxiety attacks, provided you actually take the time to absorb and apply this information, of course.
