PANIC ATTACK!
An example of a self-maintained problem
by Dr Bob Rich
Have you ever suffered from a panic attack?
Here are some facts that might help:
Your life is not in danger. During a panic attack, the sufferer is often convinced that s/he is having a heart attack or a stroke, and is dying.
THIS IS NOT SO. The symptoms of heart attacks and strokes are quite different
from those of extreme fear.
A panic attack is maintained by fear. Are you brave enough to try the
technique of 'paradoxical intention'? All you have to do is to WILL
the panic attack to hit you. Invite it. Dare it. This is particularly effective
for people whose panic is predictable: occurs in particular circumstances.
Go into the feared situation and say within your head: "Come on, you wretched
panic: hit me! Go on! I'm not afraid of you!" If it helps, have a trusted
friend with you for support.
The panic will be helpless against
you, will not be able to touch you, AS LONG AS YOU REFUSE TO BE AFRAID
OF IT!
A
panic attack is not a sign that you are going crazy. It is true that
you are in the grip of something and therefore 'out of control' of yourself,
but the symptoms and feelings are very different from those of any mental
illness. They are exactly the same as those of a person in extreme physical
danger. They occur in response to A SIGNAL YOU ARE MISINTERPRETING,
THEN THE FEAR IS MAINTAINED BY WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS IN RESPONSE
TO IT. The fear is real. It is not an illusion or a hallucination.
You are not crazy.
A
panic attack is not a sign of weakness. Anyone can have them, in the
right (well, wrong) circumstances. I once had one while watching my daughter
stand on the bottom rail of a wrought iron safety fence, at the top of
a very tall tower. I had the unreasonable feeling that, regardless of the
laws of physics, she could topple over the fence (which was above her chest
height) and fall to her death. I knew this was unrealistic, but could not
stop an extreme fear reaction. Fortunately, I knew enough to bring myself
out of it, and it has never recurred. Had I been less knowledgeable about
psychology, I might now have a full-blown phobia.
You
can control it. Just knowing the above facts can help a person get
rid of panic attacks, EVEN IF THEY HAVE BEEN A PROBLEM FOR MANY YEARS.
When you feel the next panic attack coming on, say to yourself:
"This
will be uncomfortable, but it cannot kill me. It's not a sign that I'm
going crazy. If I can stop being scared, it will never come back. Anyone
can have a panic attack."
Feelings of terror or impending doom, including full-blown panic attacks may be side-effects of drugs such as marijuana, amphetamines, caffeine taken to excess, or for certain people, even certain food additives.
A bit of science
When you are facing a real physical danger, you need LOTS of oxygen in your muscles. Then action comes, and you use it up, generating carbon dioxide in the process. So, an automatic part of extreme fear is to breathe in a way that pumps the oxygen in, fast. This is "chest breathing:" very rapid little pants done with the top of the rib cage. This has the side-effect of drastically lowering the carbon dioxide level in the blood.
Many of the symptoms of a panic attack are actually those of low carbon dioxide level. So, often the way to end a panic attack is to get carbon dioxide back into your blood.
- Stop the panting.
- Take deep, slow breaths.
- Make them ABDOMINAL breaths: have your tummy rise when you breathe in. This fills your whole lung, not just the top of it. Many people subject to panic attacks don't know how to do abdo breathing. Lie down and put a book or something on your stomach. As you breathe, make it rise and fall.
- REBREATHING helps. Blow into a plastic or paper bag, and breathe the air back from it. The air in the bag will have an increased level of carbon dioxide, but still more than enough oxygen. So, if you do this two or three times, you will have ended the biochemical cause of many of the symptoms.
Here is a very
slightly modified extract from my book, 'Anger and Anxiety: How to be in
charge of your emotions and control phobias.'
Abigail
was shopping at the local supermarket when she suddenly had a 'queer turn'.
Her vision went blurry, and there were spots dancing before her eyes. She
felt dizzy, and had to hang on to her trolley to avoid falling. Heavens!
she
thought, I'm having a stroke or a heart attack!
Immediately
she had this thought, she felt a pain in her chest. It was as if a steel
band was constricting her lungs -- she just
couldn't get enough air. Her heart was beating so hard she could feel it.
And it was very rapid. Her face and body were covered with cold sweat.
Somebody noticed
her distress, she was looked after and driven home. This terrible experience
did not recur for a while, even back in the same shop. But months later,
in a different place, suddenly it happened again.
After this,
the panic attacks (as Abigail now knew them to be) occurred with increasing
frequency, always in a crowded store. Then they spread to other situations.
When I met Abigail, I had to go to her house to see her --
she was unable to leave home.
This is 'agoraphobia'.
I don't know
what set off the first attack. It could have been a temporary drop in blood
pressure. She could have been coming down with an ear infection which affected
her sense of balance. Perhaps some smell, or a combination of things around
her, brought back a long repressed terrifying situation from her infancy.
Whatever it was, she misinterpreted the symptoms as life threatening. Then
she panicked in response to this fear.
While this first
panic attack was in full flight, Abigail was surrounded by sights, sounds,
smells, touches on her skin, sensations within her body, thoughts in her
head. Any of these, or any subtle combination of them, had the chance of
becoming new triggers for the fear. For example, the new 'signal' might
have been the sight of a packet of self raising flour while a particular
tune was being played on the store's sound system, combined with the feel
of the cold steel of the shopping trolley's handhold. This particular complex
(whatever it was) didn't recur for a few months. When it did, it was in
a different place. It set off the second panic attack. Again, there was
a good chance that a new constellation of sights, sounds, smells,
feelings, whatever, would become a signal for the fear.
So, over time,
the fear could be induced by a growing number of signals, until Abigail
was imprisoned by her fear of the fear.
[I have to say
here that there are different, competing explanations for how agoraphobia
arises. I believe that the 'classical conditioning' model I described is
correct -- otherwise I wouldn't have used it.
However, there is no controversy over the method for controlling agoraphobia.
The method is described in Chapter 5 (page 23).]
Classical conditioning
is how we pick up our automatic ways of responding to our experiences:
to the world around us, to the sensations in our body, to the thoughts
and emotions within our consciousness. A tune or a smell can vividly bring
back apparently forgotten memories, or merely the emotions you experienced
back then. You might respond with strong emotion (positive or negative)
to a stranger. Unknown to you, you are reacting to some similarity between
this person and somebody from your past. Parents tend to treat their children
in exactly the way they were treated when little, often without realizing
it. Prejudices, likes and dislikes, ways of responding to novel situations
are all affected by conditioning from the past.
We couldn't
function without having this storehouse of automatic ways of responding.
But sometimes, our conditioned habits are no longer relevant, or, as in
this example, they are unfortunate and distressing.
Often, the underlying cause of the panic attack is some past trauma. You can do something about that, as I describe in detail in From Depression to Contentment: A self-therapy guide.
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