Anxiety is often misunderstood. Many people believe that anxiety is solely a psychological condition – one where a person allows their thoughts to cause them a significant amount of fear.

While thoughts certainly play a role in the development and maintenance of anxiety, anxiety disorders also have a strong physical component, and one of the most physical of all anxiety issues is the panic attack.

Panic Attacks Are Often Misunderstood

The word “panic” leads many people to believe that panic attacks are a form of hysteria – that the person is overreacting to the situation, almost like the townspeople reacted to Godzilla. They believe, based on the term, that panic attacks are something that can be controlled by logic, and that someone suffering from a panic attack simply needs to “think more clearly” in order to stop it.

But panic attacks are nothing like what the word “panic” implies. Panic attacks are actually intense physical sensations that are known to directly resemble very serious health problems – most notably heart attacks. Panic attacks cause a person to be flooded with uncontrollable physical symptoms including:

• Rapid heartbeat/heart palpitations.
• Chest pains.
• Lightheadedness and feelings of faint.
• Difficulty breathing and feeling like you are not getting air.
• Tingling in the hands and feet.

These are only a small sample of the types of physical symptoms involved in a panic attack. There are mental symptoms as well. For example, one of the symptoms of panic attacks is an intense feeling of doom. When you combine that feeling with the physical symptoms, many people suffering from panic attacks end up hospitalized because they believe they are about to die.

What is even more interesting (and damaging) about panic attacks is that they can also occur at any moment. While they can be triggered by stress, they are often triggered by nothing more than a change in your physical sensations – and sometimes they are triggered by nothing at all.

Panic attacks are also self-sustaining. They create another anxiety symptom known as “hypersensitivity” that causes the person suffering from panic attacks to overly monitor how their body feels. Any change at all – even the smallest increase in lightheadedness due to nothing more than getting up too fast – becomes noticed and amplified, and the person’s adrenaline immediately kicks in and triggers another attack. Even thinking about panic attacks can cause panic attacks in some people. It is for all of these reasons that panic attacks are difficult to treat on your own.

Suffering From Panic Attacks in Naples

If you are someone that believes you may be suffering from panic attacks, the good news is that there are many successful therapies that can help control panic disorder. If you are in or near Naples, Florida and suffering from intense panic, please give me a call today.