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Panic attacks also known as anxiety attacks can be attributed to the high anxiety and the triggering of the fight/flight response. Panic attack treatment is possible and there are thousands of sufferers who have completely cured panic attacks.
But before going into the treatment, let’s examine the reason behind a panic attack.
The fight/flight response releases a large amount of adrenaline in the body to account for the intense physical activity that the body thinks is going to follow. It’s because the body think that there is a danger and you will need the energy to either fight or flee.
However, people suffering from some type of anxiety disorder do not have an immediate danger to which they can response. The adrenaline produced by the body needs to do something, so it causes this extreme symptoms that are together known as a panic attack. So, to completely treat panic attacks, one must cure the anxiety disorder.
Now, let’s go a step backward and analyze the anxiety disorder.
Everyone in this world gets anxious. But people who are suffering from anxiety disorder cannot get rid of the anxiety. The reason behind this is because their baseline for anxiety is lowered to a considerable level.
A normal person generally gets anxious before something big is going to happen or because of a danger. But an anxiety disorder sufferer feels anxiety all the time, even because of trivial matters.
It has been proven by experiments that you can train your brain to be afraid of something through repetition of associating that something with something dangerous. Anxiety disorder is developed through this repetition of fear and anxious thoughts. It becomes hard to get rid of the anxious thoughts and the more you think about it, the worse it gets.
Amygdala, which is a pair of organs in the brain, is responsible for the fight/flight response in human beings. It associates emotions with events/objects.
You know how whenever you see the movie that you saw with your lover on the first date, you feel that same emotion you felt that time. That is all Amygdala’s work. It associates that emotion with that event and whenever you encounter that event, you feel that emotion.
Someone suffering from anxiety disorder has in fact trained their Amygdala to associate various events in their life to fear, panic, and anxiety. This just gets worse and worse with time. And it reaches to a point when even normal thoughts (your thoughts are the events in this case) are associated with the anxiety. So it becomes almost impossible for the person to get rid of the anxious thoughts.
But research has shown that Amygdala can be trained to reverse this association in the same manner that it was developed. Through association and repetition.
And the only way to treat panic attacks, and completely cure the anxiety disorder is to reverse this process.
So, if you are suffering from panic attacks, know that they can be treated completely, and anyone who tells you that you just have to learn to “cope” with them is either trying to hide their lack of knowledge on the subject or are just plain ignorant.
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Anxiety disorder sufferers constantly have a fearful and anxious thought that seems impossible to get out of their mind. The more they try to get rid of the thought, the more intense it becomes.
The fear can be of anything like
- The well being of a loved one
- Fear of a panic attack
- Losing control
- Never getting rid of the severe anxiety disorder
Whatever the fear may be, the pattern of this anxious thought is generally the same. It intensifies as you think more about it. And every time it comes back with more intense anxious shock-waves.
Let us examine how these anxious develop and linger even though you try very hard not to think about them.
You are doing your own thing, when suddenly an anxious thought comes to your mind.
The thought flashes for a moment in your mind and you find yourself contemplating the thought. Your body then reacts to the thought and sends a fearful shock wave throughout your body’s nervous system. You feel this wave more in your stomach than anywhere else. This is because of the large amount of nerve endings that are present in the stomach.
After your body reacts to the fearful thought, it becomes more prevalent and now it is even harder to not think about it. The fearful thought becomes more intense and sends more shock-waves through your body.
This is typically how an anxious thought take control of your mind.
These fearful thoughts are very common and every one in this world gets them. The difference between a normal person and anxiety disorder sufferer is that a normal person does not give so much importance to these thoughts. A normal person just takes them for what they are, i.e. anxious thoughts that are very common.
But an anxiety disorder sufferer is at a disadvantage over here because their anxiety baseline is at a lower level than a normal person. This basically means that their body and mind reacts to anxious thoughts much easier than a normal person’s mind would.
Now, if you approach the fearful thought in the beginning in a different manner then it might be possible decrease the intensity of the anxiety to a great level.
Instead of trying to get rid of the thought, all you have to do is accept it. If you try not to think about something, then the only thing you will be thinking about is that something.
Instead of running away from the thoughts, just stop and acknowledge them.
As soon as you get a fearful thought in your mind, take a different approach than you normally would. Try this approach for instance
“These are just normal fearful thoughts that everyone encounters. I can obsess over them and be miserable. But, this time I will try something different. I will just acknowledge them, and try best not to react. This is a fear of …….. I will just label it and continue doing whatever I was doing.”
That’s one of the best ways to deal with anxious thoughts.
Acknowledge them
Label Them
Let it pass along
Don’t try to get rid of it. Don’t try not to think about it. The harder you try, the worse it will get.
You can imagine it like a cloud passing over your head. It will go away by itself in short while.
And then you can continue doing whatever you were doing.
You can find your own way to deal with these thoughts. Just remember that you should not try to suppress them. Fearful thoughts are normal and there is no way you can stop having them. But you can change your attitude towards these thoughts and in doing so, you become free of the fear.
Once you are comfortable with dealing with these thoughts, you can take it a step further and invite these thoughts.
That’s right. Invite the fearful and anxious thoughts. Call them in.
It might sound like a crazy idea, but this is truly the best way to completely eliminate the fear of fear.
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
And when you invite the fear, you are sending the message out that you are no longer afraid of the fearful thought. You are taking control.
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General Anxiety Disorder is one of the most common Anxiety Disorders in America today. It is characterized by uncontrollable, excessive and usually irrational anxiety in everyday life.
CBT has been found very effective in treating anxiety disorder, especially in the case of GAD. The reason why CBT is so effective is because it targets the main cause of the GAD, i.e. the uncontrollable thoughts.
The thought pattern of GAD sufferers generally follows the same pattern. It starts with something trivial; a normal concern for someone or something and then the worry gets worse and worse until the GAD sufferer blows it out of proportion.
GAD sufferers are known to take a small event or matter, and evaluate and interpret it to death. The “what if thoughts” are the main reason behind this evaluation and interpretation. This is actually quite normal when the sufferer is in a constant of anxiety. The “what if thoughts” and the evaluation and interpretation of each possible outcome to a situation is the normal procedure of the brain when it is in the anxious mode.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy makes the sufferer understand their thought pattern and teaches them how to stop the anxious thought before it develops into a vicious cycle of worries and anxiety. Identifying the thought patterns or problematic thoughts also known as “Cognitive Distortions” is the first step in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. If the person is able to recognize that the thought is actually unreasonable and there is no need to further exaggerate this fear or worry, it will be much easier for them to stop the anxious thought.
The GAD behavior of being constantly anxious becomes a habit for the sufferer. CBT teaches the sufferer relaxation techniques and ways to unlearn the anxious behavior and see things more accurately. Slowly by practicing the new behavior many GAD sufferers are able to overwrite their previous programming of being anxious at everything and become more relaxed and calm.
Numerous studies and researches have shown that CBT is extremely effective in treating GAD. There are a large number of experiments that have shown that GAD is an effective. One of the well known studies by Cochrane Review confirmed the effectiveness of GAD which was done in 2007. It included 25 studies with over 13,000 participants. The study showed that 46% of GAD sufferers showed a significant improvement in their anxiety symptoms after being treated with CBT. On the other hand, out of those who were treated with medication or some other form of psychotherapy, only 14% showed significant improvement.
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