Posted: Panic Attacks Symptoms
According to Douglas Adams’s comedic science-fiction classic, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy has the words ‘Don’t Panic’ inscribed across its cover in bright, cheery lettering. For those who have experienced panic attacks symptoms these words may appear somewhat simplistic to say the least.
For the sufferer, panic attack symptoms can feel like a bad case of dying: your muscles tense up, your heart rate increases to the point that it may burst from your chest, you are unable to breathe because you cannot keep up with your own supersonic respiration rate.
Yet those simple words may be hiding a great deal of truth. Panic Disorder is possibly best conceptualised as comprising of two components:
Firstly, there is the underlying anxiety that triggers the sense of panic. This could be a fear of bees or a fear of the dark or a fear of open spaces or a fear of elevators or a fear of social situations or — well, you get the idea. It could be a fear of anything and the underlying causes of the anxiety may be rooted in any number of experiences from the individual’s past. There may also be genetic factors involved in the development of anxiety disorders. This generally means that the underlying anxiety is the harder of the two components to treat. It may involve more extensive therapy and it is certainly not easy to undergo such intervention while the prospect of ongoing panic attacks symptoms are present.
The second component is the panic itself. Individuals feel the panic coming on. If they do not know what it is or have not experienced a panic attack before, they may feel like they are having a different medical problem. The physical symptoms of a panic attack may feel like the onset of a heart attack or an asthma attack. Even if the individuals do realise that they are experiencing panic attacks symptoms this does not necessarily allay their fears. Now, it is the panic attack itself that initiates a panic reaction – for many, this is the fear of losing control or the fear of embarrassing themselves in a public place. The point is that the fear of having a panic attack becomes a secondary source of anxiety, additional to the underlying trigger event and compounding the sense of panic exponentially.