Wednesday

Anxiety Attacks and Panic Disorder Relief

Anxiety disorders and panic attacks are the new age conditions which can make our life miserable and can be a big hurdle in achieving our life goals. The anxiety and panic disorder patients most of the times come up with complaints like:

“I am having difficulty falling asleep, I am beginning to sweat a lot, and I am short of breath most of the time. I get fatigued pretty easily. My headaches are more frequent and I feel irritated. This has been happening for a couple of months now,” complains Tom, 30 working for a multinational organisation.

Tom’s symptoms point towards a medical condition called Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Approximately 6.8 million people around the world are affected by this disorder, twice as many women as men. This disorder can develop at any point in life, though, childhood to adulthood are the stages when most people develop it.

Tom worries excessively about anything and everything. He can’t relax and has difficulty concentrating on any given task. He realises that, at times, his anxiety is more intense than the situation warrants but can’t seem to get rid of his tensions. He has troubles carrying out tasks as simple as filing papers. When his wife doesn’t return his call immediately, he starts fearing if she’s been in an accident, which made him miss a highly important business meeting. Tom’s lost his job due to his medical condition, his social life is a disaster, and he doesn’t use elevator to get to the 12th floor of the fear of being stuck. This condition leads to anxiety attacks and panic disorders which is more of a difficult situation for its patients.

Worries, fears and anxiety are a normal part of life, but a person with anxiety attacks and panic disorder takes things to a new level. It’s only natural to be concerned about your GCE results, but constantly talking about your papers, remembering how well you wrote each paper and calculating marks over and over, is a symptom that an individual is experiencing GAD.

People suffering from anxiety and panic disorder worry about all sorts of things and tend to anticipate the worst of every situation. For example, Tom worries from his wife not returning call immediately to filing papers inappropriately at work. He worries about his health and fears that a bomb will explode in his town when he hears about a bomb blast in another city.



Tom tried self-remedy as it is the best treatment, in case you are suffering from GAD.
You can try Tom’s self help techniques too, to help yourself. He tried the following:

• He coped with his anxiety in a positive way: Tom tried to confront his worries with a positive thought. If his wife hadn’t returned his call immediately, she might be busy or out or probably asleep. If he didn’t file the papers correctly, he could always take them out and re-file.

• He made changes in his daily routine: Tom started exercising which relaxed his body and kept his mind occupied. He introduced fruits and vegetables to his daily diet and increased his water intake. He reduced caffeine as it ignites anxiety and shifted to fresh juices. This change kept him healthy and diverted his mind.

• He practiced meditation and relaxing methods: Tom learnt to relax through meditation and deep breathing techniques. As he relaxed, his nervous system became less reactive to actions and he was less prone to nervousness and anxiety. He felt calm, relaxed and even joyful!

There are different types of Anxiety Disorders; Social Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive-compulsive Disorder and Panic Disorder. Panic Attack is a sudden gush of anxiety and fear. It can happen any where and at any time.

Panic stricken people feel like they’re going crazy or about to die. They feel there is no escape out of the particular situation and feel stuck. They can’t think clear, shiver, sweat and are restless.

Sarah experienced her first panic attack about five months ago. She was shopping when her body started shivering and she felt extreme fear. She couldn’t breathe, her heart was pounding hard and she felt like throwing up. Her panic attack lasted for approximately 10 minutes but left a lasting imprint on self confidence her and memory.

“The world begun to spin and I felt scared. I’ve never been this scared in my life. I began expecting the worst to happen; world coming to an end with me dying on unknown streets amongst strangers. At first I thought I was having a heart attack; only when my general physician checked, I was confirmed that it was only a panic attack,” Sarah reflected.

Sarah is lucky to have gone through a panic attack only once. Most of us experience it once or twice in our lives, but if someone’s experiencing it pretty often, they might be having a panic disorder.

Panic disorders are a series of constant, frequently reoccurring panic attacks. Panic disorder is hardly alone; they are usually accompanied by depression, persistent anxiety and major behavioural changes.

If you are confronting panic attacks or panic disorders, there are many things which can help you. The self help tips are:


• Awareness about your situation: You need to learn about panic attacks and panic disorders. The more information you have, the less anxiety you will feel as you will know that you’re simply facing a medical situation.
• Try cutting down on caffeine and smoking: Caffeine and smoking is said to arouse anxiety. Therefore, avoiding these can help immensely. Try avoiding stimulants and pills as they are said to have a profound effect on increasing the activity of your nervous system.
• Try deep breathing techniques: Whenever you feel panicked or anxious, just breathe deep. By doing so, you can relax your nervous system; the blood gushing to your brain slows down and your body calms down.

• And last but not the least, practice meditation techniques: Activities like meditation and yoga strengthen your body’s relaxation. These practices promote calming down of your body and mind and induce feelings of joy and self-control. So make time out for them!

If we consider the self-help tricks to over come anxiety attacks and panic disorder, we gather that the secret of defeating worries lies in positivity and happiness. Being happy and content resolve half our problems. All we need to do is to look at the bright side of the picture to overcome our fears.


No comments:

Post a Comment