Panic Attacks - Treatment without Medication

A Panic Attack is when a person experiences a massive physiological response to a recognized or unknown trigger event.



OK. Physiology means ‘processes and functions of an organism’ and that’s from a dictionary. Everything your body does regardless of what you are doing. Things like digestion; breathing; excretion (going to the toilet, sweating). Just the day to day stuff that you take for granted and don’t give a second thought to. So all of these things can go haywire. Scary hey?



So what physiological responses should you expect?



You can feel an overwhelming sense of fear, apprehension and anxiety accompanied by any of these physiological responses including rapid heart- beat and palpitations (the sensation of an irregular heartbeat), dizziness, shortness of breath, dry mouth, ringing in your ears, a need to go to the toilet, sweating, chills, hot flushes, trembling, choking sensation, nausea, fainting, numbness, or pins and needles, feelings of dread and irrational fear of impending death.



These responses are often accompanied by tightening across the chest giving the illusion of a possible heart attack, further distressing the sufferer. Although very scary, the actual attack is not life threatening in itself.



The attack is actually a very ancient response to true life threatening situations hard wired into the human psyche which, as we have reduced the threats to our life to a minimum in the modern world, our physiology has not reduced its reactions in parallel. Our bodies and the responses therein are still ancient and prehistoric.



This panic cycle continues feeding off of itself during the attack and following it as the sufferer is then scared of when the next attack will happen. One of the problems with attacks is that they are often not predictable and in some cases their trigger is not fully understood. In some cases this can continue until the victim feels unable to go out, take holidays, visit new places for the fear of a panic attack reoccurring.



If the problem is not dealt with, the fear of an attack can develop into intense fear and anxiety of being anywhere where escape may be difficult. Ultimately avoidance of situations such as being alone outside the home, travelling in a bus, aero plane or car, or being in a crowded area can result in Agoraphobia all because of the initial fear building up to such extreme proportions.



Possible triggers include stressful situations such as driving, exams and flying, wedding day nerves. So as you can see the trigger is very personal and not just a general ‘catch all’ event.



Remember that the state of panic is a totally natural one and is part of each and every one of us, it's just that the level of the response needs resetting to a lower level.