Social Anxiety Disorder Treatment

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.

Fortunately, contrary to many myths, anxiety cannot harm you and it cannot lead to any life threatening conditions. It can and does make you feel bad, but cannot cause you physical harm. Though that doesn’t really help when you’re experiencing it.

What is 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 you go through these experiences, it’s very easy to feel like you’re losing control, which is a very scary feeling in itself. To make matters worse, you can’t really understand why this happening to you, and whether or not you’re actually experiencing a more serious medical condition like a heart attack.

A Root Cause of Panic Attacks - The Fight or Flight Response

I am sure most people have heard of the fight or 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 us 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 or 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.

The brain will send a signal to the nervous system when danger presents itself. The nervous system then gets the body ready to act as well as helps the body to restore to a homeostatic state. In order to make sure that these necessary functions are carried out our autonomic nervous system is made up of two subsections called the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems.

The sympathetic system stimulates our body to release adrenaline, which gives us the ability to take action and to keep taking that action (running away, fighting etc). Once the perceived danger has passed, the parasympathetic system takes over and starts to calm us down again, back into a calm and relaxed state.

Remaining Calm Comes Naturally

Whenever you use some form of “coping strategy” that you may have been taught for controlling your attacks, it’s the parasympathetic system that you are calling into action. One thing worth remembering is that this system will always be brought into action at some point during your anxiety attacks whether you call it into action or not. It’s a built in protection system we posses which helps us survive.

The next time you have a panic attack you need to remember that it is not possible physically for the anxiety that you are feeling to cause you any bodily harm. The mind might make the feelings go on longer then what your body wanted them to, but balance will return. The fact of the matter is that our bodies are constantly striving to attain balance or homeostasis.

A fascinating feature of the “fight or flight” mechanism is that blood (which is channeled 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 people feel numbness and tingling during a panic attack - often misinterpreted as some serious health risk-such as the precursor to a heart attack. 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

Probably one of the most frightening feelings that a person experiences during a panic attack is the fear of smothering or suffocating. Tightness in the chest and throat are very common. While most people can understand the fear of loosing control of the ability to breath, speaking from personal experience the anxiety is fueled because what you are really afraid of is your breathing stopping and that you will not be able to recover. The truth is that a panic attack will not stop our breathing.

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, and sensations of choking or smothering, and even pains or tightness in the chest.

As that I have experience panic attacks first hand, I can tell you that there were times when I wasn’t sure that my body would be able to slow my breathing down and I would concentrate on getting my breathing under control. Telling myself to take breath in and let it out. With my mingling in trying to gain control and disregard what my body needed, it sent my body into overdrive and intensify the feelings I was trying to overcome. It was not until I began using the technique that I will describe to you shortly that I was able to let my body do what it was designed to do.

One of the less obvious side effects of the increased breathing rate, is that blood flow to your brain actually decreases. Although the decrease is slight, and not dangerous, it can make you feel dizzy and lead to blurred vision, hot flushes and disorientation.