Panic Anxiety - How Do You Master It?

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Panic Anxiety - How Do You Master It?

Sunday, August 9th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

What Is Panic Anxiety?

More and more people, every year go to the doctor and report that they are feeling stressed, run down and that they can’t cope with their lives. They tell their doctors about odd symptoms they’ve been experiencing for the past few weeks and their doctor gives them a shock: he diagnoses them as suffering from panic anxiety or panic attacks. Many people have heard of it but not many people really know what it is.

Symptoms of a Panic Attack

The symptoms of a panic attack are instantly recognizable. The most common symptoms of these attacks occur mostly in the upper body.

Heart Symptoms

A person suffering from a panic attack will often have heart palpitations. Their heart will start to race very quickly or pound very loudly. And the pounding of the heart will often cause a person to experience mild to severe chest pain as well.

Symptoms Related To the Stomach

Stomach related symptoms like nausea and sometimes bloating are also common.

Breathing Symptoms

Breathing difficulties represents the third main symptom. They often experience they can’t get oxygen enough or they can even feel unable to catch their breath. Some patients even feel like they are being buried all of a sudden.

Dizziness and Lightheadedness

People also experience dizziness or experience brief “weak spells” where they feel like they are about to collapse. Many people actually do collapse and faint. The same thing can happen with lightheadedness ? instead of feeling dizzy someone gets lightheaded very quickly and has to quickly sit down to avoid collapsing.

Other Physical Symptoms

There are more physical signs of panic anxiety as well: a person’s skin may lose color or they may experience hot flashes or chills.

Panic attacks should only last a few moments but unfortunately, for some people, they can last for as long as a few minutes.

What Causes a Panic Attack?

Most doctors believe that Panic Attacks are caused by a psychological malfunction in the body’s “alarm system.” The above symptoms of panic attacks occur naturally when a person feels that their life is in some way threatened. Only when someone has a panic attack, their mind convinces their body that something terrible is about to happen to them.

As for social anxiety and anxiety in general, fear is the root cause of panic attacks even if the actual fears themselves are different. It’s believed that major life stress can suddenly trigger the beginning of panic attacks and that even some medications make someone more likely to experience panic anxiety or attacks.

by Gary Gui

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