Conquer Your Anxiety and Panic Attack Symptoms

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This is part 1 of a 2 part article about panic disorders. I’ve split it up to make it easier to read

Some people are afraid to ride in an elevator. For others, a traffic jam, the supermarket checkout line, a ringing telephone or a visit to the dentist can cause crippling fear and any excuse to avoid the situation.

For still others, these irrational fears so severely impair the quality of their lives that they remain prisoners in their homes.

They suffer from phobias and panic disorder. The number of groups that provide help for these people has been increasing in recent years, yet representatives of the groups and health-care professionals say the public’s awareness and comprehension of the disorder needs to be increased.

Many people with such phobias say additional measures are needed to educate the public about the disorder, to filler out its male victims who often camouflage symptoms with alcohol abuse and to identify a predisposition to the disorder in childhood.

There is a need to educate people in ways to recognize panic disorder as something which is very real.

Those who suffer from the disorder often face ridicule. The lack of understanding by family, friends and the general public can undercut many important relationships.

Doctors say panic disorder is a condition in which people experience an attack of panic combined with real, not imaginary, physical symptoms These may include heart palpitations, nausea, sweating, severe dizziness, numbness of limbs a lump in the throat, difficulty in breathing or swallowing, tremors and a sense of impending doom.

Sufferers from panic disorder often recall a relative who has experienced the same disorder, much as some alcoholics are children of alcoholics.

The site of a person’s first panic attack often results in a later avoidance of that place or situation.

A person suffering his or her first panic attack in an elevator, for example, may associate the experience with the elevator and avoid elevators, thereby acquiring a simple phobia.

The fears of flying, driving and heights are the most common, but some people have similar fears about certain colors, about writing their names in public and about the nighttime.

If panic strikes in a different situation, experts say, the person may connect it with his avoidance behavior and without professional help, slowly expand the range of fears until he becomes a prisoner to his own fear of fear or becomes agoraphobic - having a fear of being in open or public places.

The phobic in this way begins to engage in “What if I have another attack?’ thinking or anticipatory anxiety and avoid more and more situations.

Like the rings that well from one pebble cast in a lake, the range of avoidance becomes larger and larger. A combination of factors including heredity, biochemistry and an overload of stress often act as a catalyst that sets the first panic attack into motion.

It is less common that a single event like a car accident or a fire will bring on an attack.

One theory is that panic disorder is actually part of a double anxiety some people experience. An already anxious individual at school age, for example, may fear test taking.

If the fear builds and spreads to other areas and is left untreated, the person could eventually develop panic disorder.

The anxiety disorder group network estimates that 2.9 million Americans, or 1.6 percent, experience panic disorder at some time in their lives.

The New Jersey Self-Help Clearinghouse at St Clare’s Riverside Hospital in Denville reports that in 1986 there were 10 self-help panic disorder and phobic groups in the State. Now there are 34 it says.

Part 2 of this article is here