Panic Attacks - At Last the Solution

anxiety attack symptoms

2006-09-06T01:44:00.000-07:00

Meditate as one way to find greater calm

2006-08-15T18:19:00.000-07:00

Meditate
It's your call. So many of my clients seek help from me and from other people because their lives are so out-of-control. By that, I mean that they usually only seek help when they can't sleep, or when they want to sleep too much, or they can't eat, or they want to eat too much. Many of the clients who come to me with anxiety problems also have lives that are way too filled with way too much to do.

Extremes. Only in extremes do we become aware of the subtle but devastating effect that the stressors in their lives are having on our biological systems. You see, even though we're all blogging away, and cyberspace has almost replaced the handwritten letter (what a thrill to get one of those!!), we're still the same biological entity we've always been. We still need sleep, food, water to survive, and not necessarily in that order :-).

When our brains are bombarded with too many visual, audio and other images we all find it increasingly difficult to 'tune out', 'turn off the inner noise'. Our sleep is not as restful and our energy is not at its peak. At that stage, we become even more vulnerable to episodes of out-of-control anxiety and panic attacks. No. I'm not saying that any one thing causes anxiety issues. I am saying that an inability to have a good and positive reaction to the stressors in our lives can and does make an anxiety-prone person even more on edge.

When was the last time you did absolutely nothing except count your breaths?
That translates into: when did you last sit quietly, at peace with your self, and just....be. Just let your thoughts drift in, no fighting them, no engaging with them, just letting them drift out again? When was the last time you meditated?

Never? Ages ago? An hour ago?

From my counselling practice and based on the many people I've worked with over the years, I have found meditation to be the single most direct path to lowering the negative effects of too much work, too many children's tears during a normal day, too much television, too many words on the radio.

Find peace. Meditate.

Escape all your Emotional Baggage... Forever: Emotional Freedom Technique™ - a counsellor's review

2006-08-02T03:10:00.000-07:00

Escape all your Emotional Baggage... Forever: Emotional Freedom Technique™ - a counsellor's review

Anxiety and Panic Attacks and an instant escape

2006-07-27T19:18:00.000-07:00

Life's too short! Escape from anxiety now.
Anxiety is absolutely vital to our existence. Without it, we'd never get out of the way of danger and most of us would never be motivated to study for exams, train for sporting events or even write blogs! So yes, I'm sure you all know the difference between what we can call positive anxiety and negative anxiety. The latter type does not motivate anyone. It undermines your confidence and let's be brutally honest about it, that type of over-the-top anxiety which sometimes leads to feelings of terror and panic, that sort of anxiety is just so upsetting and it can ruin the best events.

Many of my counselling clients talk about their anxiety and panic attack symptoms as if they are out of their control. "It just happens out of the blue". "I wasn't even thinking about anything in particular and I felt those panic feelings."

I will go into the physiology of anxiety in my next post. Those of you who know it back to front, inside out and upside down, you can skip the next post. I'll walk you through the fact that even your out-of-the-blue panic feelings are about you and your thoughts. A caveat as always. I have to assume that you've been thoroughly checked by your wonderful General Practitioner or Physician. They've reassured you that your racing pulse, dry mouth, sweaty palms and all the other physical symptoms are not due to heart problems, emphysema, Diabetes and a range of other physical maladies.

Emotional Freedom Techniques™ is your path to freedom
For now, I want to tell you that you can quickly and easily go to the other side of anxiety, panic attacks and phobias using Gary Craig's amazing Emotional Freedom Techniques™ . If you've invested in my self-help, downloadable kit Calming Words you'll have read why I am so excited by it. Look, I do absolutely believe in you or your loved one facing your anxiety, understanding its physiology and psychology but...It's now such a big but that I use the Emotional Freedom Techniques™ as an integral part of my counselling Practice. But, I also believe that I was very, very fortunate to have found this marvellous technique which transcends conventional approaches to anxiety, and panic attacks and other emotional problems. When my clients are first introduced to it, I'm sure they think: "hey, Jeannette's lost it here! What am I doing tapping various parts of my face??". Gary Craig admits that the technique looks weird. So does sticking needles into people to help them in childbirth or at the Dentist. That's called acupuncture and it's now taught as an elective in most Australian and British medical courses. Emotional Freedom Techniques™ is based on the same principles.

My clients may be sceptical initially. Then they're amazed. Sometimes, after many years of endless anxiety attacks and panic attacks or phobias about bridges, water, spiders...whatever, one or two ten minute sessions and they're free.

No. I don't know exactly how it works. I just know it does. I don't fully understand how acupuncture works either. Again, we all now know it does. So if you really want emotional freedom - freedom from addictions (I've used it with wonderful results on food addictions), freedom from anxiety, go to Gary Craig's website. Download his fr+ee comprehensive manual and see for yourself -> Emotional Freedom Techniques™. Visit now if you want to be rid of our anxiety and panic attacks.

Panic attacks when you're home alone

2006-07-20T20:47:00.000-07:00

Panic attacks can be terrifying and debilitating at any time. But when you're home alone in the evening, they can be intensely frightening.

Why would that be? There are a number of reasons but the primary one is that people whose anxiety switch is turned to 'high' or 'overload' are usually very imaginative and sensitive. Take those basic ingredients of a great human being, add some wind howling outside, strange noises emanating from the ceiling, a window shutter banging, floors creaking and....I'm scared just thinking about it.

When a highly imaginative and creative person has experienced out-of-the-blue episodes of panicky fear and terror-like symptoms, it seems absolutely logical that when put in a situation which can be a bit scary for most of us, that person will key in more powerfully to the imaginative possibilities that the noises are...real danger.

Many of the people I've counselled talk about how until they recovered from what we call panic attacks, the greatest fear they had was that of having to stay alone at night. On that note however, I must add a caveat there. Those of my clients who lived alone all the time, didn't have that reaction. I'll leave it to you to guess why, or why not.

At home alone on a dark wintry night...
May I suggest that the next time you're home alone listening to all those scary sound, you do this.

First, write down what you find frightening. Re-read what you've written. Date it. The difference between what you've written and how you've felt in the past with episodes of panic is this.

Now at home listening to strange and frightening sounds, you probably feel that you have legitimate reasons to feel afraid. You may have written that you heard the back fence door open, so you're afraid that an intruder has come on to your property. I'd be afraid in that circumstance. Anyone with any sense in the 21st century would be worried. So don't just assume that your feelings are baseless. Go quickly and quietly to a place where you can see if your fears were justified.

Great. No one is there. The gate is closed. In fact, you can see that it's locked.

Now write down how you feel after that sensible check up.

You feel better? Of course. OK, you're someone who feels panicky when you know it's not appropriate. You wish you didn't feel panic stricken at the movies, in the Mall, driving on a freeway. Just because you do, doesn't mean that you can't deal with legitimately potentially dangerous and frightening situations in a very calm and sensible way.

If however when you're home alone, you write about generalised sense of just being scared - as in your episodes of panic, then do as I advised in an earlier post, do the only thing that can set you free from high levels of anxiety and panic: welcome the feelings of fear. Look at them, as if you're observing an experiment. Tell your fear symptoms to do their worst.

And you'll feel them go away.

If you no longer fear your feelings of fear in your panic attacks, it will lose its power to...frighten you. Keeping notes of those episodes will also help later. You can read about how you felt and how you survived those panic attacks.

Anxiety and its conquest is a journey

2006-07-13T20:02:00.000-07:00

Anxiety can be conquered

Anxiety and panic attacks can be overcome. My experience of over twenty years in that field is that there is no instant cure. In fact, the idea of a 'cure' in the sense of you never, ever, feeling anxious again is a nonsense. Too many people on the Internet, and I guess elsewhere, have great products and programs to sell and to sell them, they distort the truth to the extent that you say they were either grossly exaggerating, or lying. Others have very questionable products and programs and the same marketing tactics are used.

When I say that there is nothing that can cure anxiety, all I mean is that you need your anxiety, fear and even terror to keep you safe and well. When your levels of anxiety are out of control and inappropriate, then that mechanism which is part of your warning signal - to tell you to get out of danger's way - that healthy emotional response is a problem not a help.

Talk to your fears
What you can do, and do very easily, is to learn how to manage your anxiety so that it doesn't bubble over and become a problem. You can follow Dr Claire Weekes's advice that I mentioned in an earlier post. That is, you can accept the feelings of inappropriate anxiety, fear and panic and just say to them, words to this effect :

" Oh. Welcome back you panic feelings. You always come around when I'm going to the Mall, or driving (put in your situations here). I realise that although I feel afraid, in fact I feel terrified, I know that there's nothing to fear - except you...and you can't hurt me, you're just feelings. I'm afraid so my pulse races, and my mouth goes dry. Those sensations make me upset and even more panicky. Who wouldn't be!! But I do know that there's no real and present danger. You're here because my panic switch is on when it shouldn't be. So welcome, but the party's over. I don't want you around. So watch me while I watch you....evaporate."

I don't expect you to do that word for word. But I do hope that you try that approach to your anxiety and panic attacks.

Anxiety doesn't always lead to panic

2006-07-05T21:11:00.000-07:00

Anxiety doesn't always develop into episodes where you feel terrified, with your heart racing, your throat going dry and your palm sweating, otherwise known as a panic attack.

In my counselling work, I find that there are two groups of people with anxiety. One group seeks help early. They work to face their anxiety, their role in its continuation and they learn new more helpful ways to manage situations, people and places that evoke anxiety.

The other group - equally wonderful, creative and intelligent people - have often been so taken aback by their anxious thoughts and the very upsetting feelings of fear, that they haven't wanted to even acknowledge they have those anxiety feelings. That's more than understandable in a world that talks about anxiety disorder, as if anxiety is a disorder. Our world with its emphasis on yet-to-be-defined success, usually paints a picture of successful people as those who've never had an anxious nano second!

I've met a number of University students for instance who feel they'd rather face a firing squad than talk in class. Those people have a mixture or shyness ( a beautiful trait in the world of brash over-confidence), social anxiety, anxiety or even agoraphobia. In each instance, we're talking about their emotional response to the world. They do not have a disorder. Of course even if they did, that wouldn't make them a lesser being. Think of Stephen Hawking. What I'm alluding to is the fact that many people don't feel confident about even seeking help. Let alone getting help in time to re-write their anxiety thoughts and feelings.

As a consequence, some of those people experience panic attacks. Not all. And nor do panic attacks all have their genesis or beginnings among people who have had anxiety for years. Some people have their first episode of out-of-the-blue panic, terror, without ever having had a more generalised anxiety.

However your anxiety, panic attacks or agoraphobia started, you can overcome it. Neither this blog nor any website, e-book, CD or book will be a proper alternative to competent diagnosis and treatment with a healthcare professional. However, there are wonderful resources available to complement that care.

One great new website I discovered recently - and you may know it already - is the PanicSurvivor.com site. As its name suggests, it's a wonderful site for all of you who are surviving panic attacks, and those you who have escaped them. Please visit that site if you haven't done so already. Or tell your friend or family member who has anxiety and panic attacks about it. For those of you who can't find a counsellor to help you, or who can't afford it, the Internet will be a great resource to use to overcome your anxiety and panic attacks.

More about freedom from panic attacks

2006-06-28T02:05:00.000-07:00

More about the insight that will set you free
In my last post, I shared with you the truth, the insight that I first read when I studied the writings of the very empathic Dr Claire Weekes.

I suggested that you embrace your episodes of panic instead of fighting them.

That's a lot easier to advise than it is to do!
Yes, I do understand that.

So I'm suggesting that you might want to practise that sort of acceptance, that relaxing into your fear-filled feeling while you're feeling safe at home. Practise just a few times and you’ll see how well it works. How will you practise if you're feeling fine and safe? Oh go on!!

I know you can make yourself feel great fear just by remembering the last time you were terrified. That's right. Bring those memories back. Feel those symptoms and as part of this exercise…. just accept them. That’s right. I’m asking you to do the very opposite to what you’d normally think of doing.

I’m not saying TRY to do anything. I’m not saying TRY to relax. I’m not saying TRY to divert yourself from your fear-filled thoughts. I am saying – do absolutely nothing.

Accept your feelings.

Just to be clear about this, Dr Weekes was not saying and I'm not saying: “here is THE CURE for panic attack symptoms.” We can leave silly claims like that to other people on the Internet claiming that they have THE CURE and it's a Method.

The simple truth is that the way to escape fear is to float with it.

Use of diversion
A quick note to those of you who use diversionary tactics to …well, to divert you from the intense feelings of fear. Maybe you count backwards from one hundred to one in Greek, or count the bricks in the wall. Doesn’t matter. By all means keep doing that if you think it helps. My unsolicited advice? It may help in the short term. Longer term it's just that – a diversion.

All those tactics act in an insidious way to keep the panic attacks with you. They even become as much an habituated response as the panic itself. More of that in another article.

When you recognise your role in your own panic episodes, you’re 90% closer to the solution, to a life in which being in the grip of panic will be part of your past. Next time you feel the first fluttering of fear and panic attack think to yourself:“I know you. You’re nothing to panic about. Come on and do your worst. I know you can’t harm me. You’re just some throw back to the days when I might have needed to run away from the sabre toothed tiger.”

It seems almost cruel to tell you but if you’ve been experiencing anxiety and panic for a while, you are the main reason that your fears stay with you. It is your fear of the fear-filled symptoms that keep your fear going. You’re the major part of your problem. But you are also the total solution.

It’s all in the mind
As I point out in my e-book Calming Words, at www.calmingwords.com if you feel terrified standing in that queue at the supermarket, or sitting in the middle of the row at the cinema, the feelings you feel are fine. Those feelings of anxiety and panic are a perfect reaction to…danger. But there’s no real danger in the Supermarket – apart from the ever-increasing cost of goods. Your mind sent the wrong message “danger, danger” to your body. Your body has then had the right reaction to that danger message.

To end with the good news: those messages can be rewritten, re-learned. More in my next post - or in your comments - about how to conquer anxiety and panic attacks.

Anxiety and Panic Attacks: this truth will set you free

2006-06-28T01:23:00.000-07:00

This post is part of an article I wrote for one of my Oasis of Calm e-zines. It's free and you're very welcome to subscribe.

Unlike so many people on the Internet, I don’t claim to have discovered THE CURE for panic attacks and other anxiety states. I do offer you a beautifully simple insight into panic which will change your reaction to it. Immediately you’ll start you on the path to calm. The insight?

'Accept your panic symptoms and ….they’ll go. Fight them, and they’ll intensify.”

Look at that word ‘intensify’.

It’s about tensing up. Becoming worried and even more panicky about….what? Your feelings of panic, or what we call panic attacks. Once you really realise that, you’ll see that although they’re unwelcome, uninvited and not appropriate to the situation, your feelings of terror and panic are just that: they’re only feelings. They can’t harm you.

Yes, they’re unpleasant.

Yes, I know you don’t want them.

But tell me this, my sweet one,

“in the past, has tensing up and worrying even more about feeling panicky

helped those feelings to dissipate?”

Your answer? I know it’s NO.

Just so you’re very clear: tensing up and fighting your symptoms of panic help will NOT HELP YOU today, or in the future.

Before I tell you more, let me acknowledge that this insight is not mine. There's a book on the Internet which is based entirely on that one insight. The person selling his $47US e-book claims that it’s his discovery to send panic away. The truth? The truth has become a very rare commodity on the Internet, the truth is that many, many people have known that insight for decades.

For instance, over thirty years ago, an Australian General Practitioner (GP) the late Claire Weekes gave that insightful advice to many hundreds of thousands of people through her books, recordings and through the self-help groups she established. She advised people who experienced episodes of anxiety and panic to do the opposite of what they had been doing, ie fighting and resisting the feelings of panic, the panic attacks. Instead, they should float into their panic, and welcome it like an old friend who can do us no harm.

Dr Weekes knew that if you experience those terrifying fear-filled symptoms you know that there’s nothing to fear. That’s at a rational level. At an emotional level, she knew that you still feel overwhelmed. In fact, for many people, the fact that they can’t explain why they feel so terrified is often the most upsetting.

Fear of fear itself
Once you accept that there is no real danger, you’ll see that your real fear is the fear of the actual panicky feelings. If you could just let those inappropriate messages of fear come and do their worst, you’d learn how to send those fears packing.

So to summarise, offer no resistance. Accept. Flow. When your panic attacks, when your pulse races, your heart pounds, your tummy goes queasy, your mouth dries up….do the opposite of what you normally do. Instead of panicking even more “oh no, I’m in the middle of another of those attacks”, do this:

S T O P... B R E A T H E D E E P L Y...O B S E R V E...

Mimic Mother Nature
Flow with the hurricaneJust as the grass and the trees sway with the wind, rather than rigidly resist it, let your fear feelings come. Then, just observe what happens without offering any resistance to those feelings.

Stayed tuned for more about how to deal with anxiety and panic attacks.

Anxiety can be your friend

2006-06-27T01:34:00.000-07:00

Anxiety is a normal part of life
I do realise that you know that - somewhere in the back of your mind you do realise that getting yourself in knot of fear and dread about things is taking normal anxiety to the outer limits. Once your switch for 'let's have a moment of anxiety about this' is turned on, it's very difficult (but by no means impossible) to switch it off, or at least to a normal setting.

Let's assess how much anxiety you should feel
In my free e-zine Oasis of Calm for which you're most welcome to sign up at www.calmingwords.com I outline my top six practical and proven ways to bring your anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed under control.

One of the best ways to conquer anxiety and to stop it leading into panic attacks is to do what I suggest in the first of those six tips: that is, assess the damage. Look with as much objectivity as you can at the situation about which you're now having an anxiety attack.

Your normal anxiety response is a double whammy negative.

First, you predict (usually) that the very worst will happen when you go for the job interview, ask someone out for a date, present your paper at class on Friday, or go shopping with your best friends tomorrow.
Secondly, now that you've over-estimated the catastrophe, and imagined how catastrophic everything will be, you compound that by under-estimating your ability to cope with the situation.

I do understand that it's not your fault.

Of course I realise that you want to be more relaxed. I do know that you hate those rumblings of uneasiness, fear and even downright terror.

You want to transform all that negative energy into the path to how you once were - bright, cheerful and at peace. Looking forward to going out instead of being terrified by the thought.

I have to tell you at this point however, that you have to face and learn about your own unwitting role in your reactions and your anxiety, before you can adjust those reactions. It's no use at all someone like me telling you that you're over-reacting. You have to come to that conclusion.

One useful way to do that is to write the numbers 1 to 10 on a sheet of paper.

Done that?

From 1 to 10 with 10 being the worst, what is your greatest catastrophe?

At number 10 write the very worst thing that could happen to you in your life. That's right. Think it through and write them down. They're number 10. That's the top. That's the worst thing. That's a real, a genuine catastrophe.

You've written what? Death of my parents, siblings, spouse? Or, you find out that you have a very serious illness.

Now go back up the list and write something against number 5.

Spend some time on that exercise. When you've finished, you may (I hope you have) you may have rated your current worry as a number 3 or maybe a number 4 or 5. If it is a 10, a genuine 10, a genuine catastrophe, then it is absolutely appropriate for you to feel as bad as you do. That's why we have our emotions.

If it's not a 10, or even a 5 (compared to a 10), then maybe you're on your way to realising that you are the main creator, the author, of your anxiety attacks. You start them, boost them with memories, and then fear their return.

Stayed tuned for the easiest way to stop that cycle of fear, memory, fear. No more anxiety.

2006-06-19T00:48:00.000-07:00

Panic attacks can be overcome.

The first step in your journey to conquer your anxiety and panic attacks is to accept one simple truth.

You created your fears, anxiety and phobias.

I don't mean that in an accusatory "you're to blame" sense. I mean that your fears, though real, are also creations of your imagination. Just as you created your anxiety, you are the only person who holds the solution to those troubling emotional responses.

Anxiety and panic attacks upsetting you? You do have the solution
This blog will provides lots of free help to overcome your fears, anxiety and phobias.

The fundamental truth you may intuitively know already is that your vivid imagination, your memories and your habitual reactions to life are the key to keeping you imprisoned by your fears.

And the good news is?

Together we'll use your same resourcefulness, your creativity, your intelligence, to rewrite your reactions, and to re-orient your habits. If you'd like to read a longer article about how panic attacks function, go to Oasis of Calm my twice monthly e-zine. It’s free, and I know you’ll find it helpful.

For now. Stay tuned for all the solutions to anxiety and panic attacks.