Those who have experienced them know that anxiety and panic attacks can be crippling to your quality of life. Fortunately, there are plenty of options for dealing with them. Today we'll be discussing the main three categories and which one works best.
The three categories are the physical, the mental, and the chemical. Each is useful in its own right, and you may end up using all three to help stop your attacks.
We'll start with the chemical, as that seems to be the most valued, at least in theory. Pills to help with the attacks seem much better than they actually are. Be careful with which you use as some have side effects or are habit forming. They are designed to treat the symptoms, not the problem. You should expect to take them for the rest of your life if you don't do something to eliminate the source of your excess anxiety. You can use them for temporary relief until you learn the techniques and thinking patterns to deal with stress, but I wouldn't suggest them as a long-term solution.
The physical category can help you gain traction, but it won't eliminate the problem by itself either. It may not seem obvious why this category will help since the attacks result from mental unrest, but your mind reflects the state your body is in. When you can relieve physical stress, mental stress will be alleviated as well. For relaxation, most will tell you to focus on slowing down your breathing. When you breathe like this, you are relaxing yourself physically and mentally. On a similar note, you can also learn to anchor certain feelings with physical gestures which can be extremely helpful, but that is a more advanced technique.
When you exercise regularly and get plenty of rest, you'll be less stressed and more able to deal with what life throws at you. Eating appropriately for the condition also helps tremendously. Avoid nicotine, caffeine, sleeping pills, alcohol, drugs, and large quantities of sodium. Some substances on the list can actually cause panic attacks.
Finally there is the mental category. There is no shortage of methods or therapies you can try here. When you learn to control your perceptions, you can reshape your mental behaviors. You can eliminate most of your stress by reshaping these mental behaviors in a positive manner.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) does wonderfully for this. CBT has many techniques that can be used as it is a relatively large branch of psychotherapy. Generally a patient will journal thoughts and feelings about significant events or stresses that occur between sessions. You can discover your stressful mental patterns by looking over these entries. Those patterns can then be short-circuited in order to prevent attacks.
Through repetition you can create new associations or patterns as is done during exposure therapy. It is a subcategory of CBT. Either with a physical or mental focus, it will repeatedly expose a person to what is normally a stress in a controlled environment. This leads your brain to realize that certain events or sensations do not require a fight or flight response, ending the attacks completely in time.
The three categories are the physical, the mental, and the chemical. Each is useful in its own right, and you may end up using all three to help stop your attacks.
We'll start with the chemical, as that seems to be the most valued, at least in theory. Pills to help with the attacks seem much better than they actually are. Be careful with which you use as some have side effects or are habit forming. They are designed to treat the symptoms, not the problem. You should expect to take them for the rest of your life if you don't do something to eliminate the source of your excess anxiety. You can use them for temporary relief until you learn the techniques and thinking patterns to deal with stress, but I wouldn't suggest them as a long-term solution.
The physical category can help you gain traction, but it won't eliminate the problem by itself either. It may not seem obvious why this category will help since the attacks result from mental unrest, but your mind reflects the state your body is in. When you can relieve physical stress, mental stress will be alleviated as well. For relaxation, most will tell you to focus on slowing down your breathing. When you breathe like this, you are relaxing yourself physically and mentally. On a similar note, you can also learn to anchor certain feelings with physical gestures which can be extremely helpful, but that is a more advanced technique.
When you exercise regularly and get plenty of rest, you'll be less stressed and more able to deal with what life throws at you. Eating appropriately for the condition also helps tremendously. Avoid nicotine, caffeine, sleeping pills, alcohol, drugs, and large quantities of sodium. Some substances on the list can actually cause panic attacks.
Finally there is the mental category. There is no shortage of methods or therapies you can try here. When you learn to control your perceptions, you can reshape your mental behaviors. You can eliminate most of your stress by reshaping these mental behaviors in a positive manner.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) does wonderfully for this. CBT has many techniques that can be used as it is a relatively large branch of psychotherapy. Generally a patient will journal thoughts and feelings about significant events or stresses that occur between sessions. You can discover your stressful mental patterns by looking over these entries. Those patterns can then be short-circuited in order to prevent attacks.
Through repetition you can create new associations or patterns as is done during exposure therapy. It is a subcategory of CBT. Either with a physical or mental focus, it will repeatedly expose a person to what is normally a stress in a controlled environment. This leads your brain to realize that certain events or sensations do not require a fight or flight response, ending the attacks completely in time.
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