Panic Attacks

What are Panic Attacks?

In a word DREADFUL ….. literally you are in dread of…….. well, it can be anything really, and often people find it hard to pin down exactly what it is they’re terrified of. They just know they have to get out or get in or get away. They are often too scared to get into analysing why. The effect is a collection of physical symptoms, mixed with a feeling of helplessness. At their worst, you may feel quite certain you’re going to die………….. if that doesn’t scare you, nothing will. They may come in response to specific situations and/or in response to nothing in particular. Subsequent ones are rarely as bad as the first but there is always that “what if?” There are a variety of responses that you can make. Some people put it down to experience and it doesn’t recur. Some start by avoiding Asda then Marks & Spencer, then the corner shop, till they’re just about avoiding everything.

So How Can Psychotherapy and Hypnotherapy Help?

There are two ways it can help. By equipping you to deal with the attack itself and secondly, by helping you to discover what the underlying problems are that have produced the panics in the first place and dealing with them better.

I believe that trying to control panic attacks is like trying to push a beach ball beneath the water of a swimming pool. It can be done, but the ball, like the panic attacks, will always spring back to the surface at some time.

By using hypnotherapy, relaxation techniques and learning how to change your point of view, it’s possible to hold on to the reality of your situation; the fact that you feel anxious and the fact that the right now of what’s going on is OK and your panic will subside.

When real stuff is happening you don't have time to panic, you're too busy dealing with whatever's going on. People who suffer panic attacks are usually quite good in an emergency situation and that's the key to the way out. If you're feeling panicky, then by definition the moment you're in must be OK. You can't stay panicky whilst acknowledging that "right now is OK."

It’s not rocket science. It’s about staying in the moment

Panics are always based on “what ifs” and “supposings,” even if that future is the moment after next.

By staying in the moment you uncouple yourself from the catastrophe you anticipate.

Remember, if in the midst of a panic attack someone collapsed besides you and a first-aider shouted, “Quick, hold his leg…. Pull it tight,” your panic would pretty much vanish. Why? It’s simple; since you only have a limited amount of attention, the more you focus on the poor chap’s leg, the less you have for considering the impending catastrophe of you collapsing. You can’t intellectualise your way out of panic attacks. You can stay with right now and the panics will look after themselves. You can change your life

For a great many people, panic attacks are a result of leading their emotional lives like a pressure cooker.

There is often little you can do about the “heat” that life generates; sometimes hot sometimes cool. Like a pressure cooker, if you try to deal with difficult situations by “keeping the lid on” it becomes increasingly difficult to suppress your emotions and then something’s got to give and, like the safety valve on a pressure cooker, you get a panic attack.

It’s by examining how you come to make these choices you do and what other options might be available that the underlying causes of panic attack may be abolished.