What Is A Panic Attack?

Summary–Our counsellors Ashford Kent understand what an overwhelming experience both emotionally and physiologically a panic attack can be. People who have panic attacks often believe that they are having a heart attack or are dying, as their body and mind feels completely out of control. Some people might experience one panic attack or a few but they go away on their own. However, for others, panic attacks become more frequent and whilst the first one may have been triggered by a stressful event, subsequent attacks can feel like they are coming out of nowhere adding to the terror the person experiences.

Panic attacks are fairly common and are not dangerous.

Many people will have panic attacks in their livesbut they don’t lead to the outcomes people often fear, such as attacks such as having a heart attack, dying, or going crazy.

Panic is your body’s natural reaction to extreme stress.

Panic is an evolutionarily mechanism that is designed to help you survive life-threatening danger by triggering your fight or flight response. However, the threat of a predator is much lower in the modern world and now panic attacks are often caused by a stressful non-life-threatening but it still triggers this ancient survival mechanism.

Panic attacks are over in minutes and won’t last forever!

Our counsellors Ashford Kent help our clients understand that panic attacks are self-limiting as your body cannot maintain high level anxiety for long. After a few minutes panic attacks stop on their own. People often believe their panic attack ended as a result of them fleeing a situation that caused panic and it would have lasted forever if they hadn’t fled. In reality, even if they stayed in the anxiety evoking situation, their panic symptoms will rapidly diminish.

Don’t try and avoid having a panic attack!

Panic attacks will continue causing problems if you change your behaviour in order to try to avoid them.

For example, you might stop going out in public because you are afraid you will have a panic attack. Fear and avoidance of situations communicate to your body that you are in danger and that you are only safe because of avoidance. This leads to a cycle of increasing panic attacks and avoidance.

People who experience panic attacks, tend to pay more attention to physiological symptoms (such as heart rate) Monitoring heart rate or other panic symptoms throughout the day communicates to your body that you are still in danger and increases the likelihood of additional attacks.

How to stop having panic attacks–Our counsellors Ashford Kent can help you challenge your thoughts.

If you are not afraid of panic attacks, they are much less likely to cause you problems. Using the informationabove, you can challenge and correctly identify panic for what it is - a false alarm of your survival mechanism.

Avoid avoidance.

Don’t avoid activities, places, or people because you have had a panic attack. Do the things that scare you as long as they aren’t harmful or dangerous. This will keep your panic in check and will lead your body and mind to recalibrate.

Stop focussing on your physical symptoms

If you notice yourself doing this, direct your attention externally to the outside. Perhaps imagine that you are talking to someone on the phone and trying to paint them a mental image of what you are seeing.

If you would like some help on how to manage panic attacks then contact our counsellors Ashford Kent at CBT and Counselling Kent today.