What is a Panic Attack?
It is an anxiety disorder that occurs in unexpected situations and progresses with panic attacks. During attacks, intense fear, anxiety and distress are experienced. Panic attacks occur very suddenly, reach the highest level in about 10 minutes and continue for about 20-30 minutes.
How Does a Panic Attack Occur?
An important event occurs that affects the person's external or internal world. This event may be a serious life event such as death, disaster, loss, a heavy responsibility at work, or an exam at school that increases anxiety. An event that creates intense anxiety causes the person to focus on his or her body. Focusing attention on the body causes the normal reactions of the body to be interpreted as catastrophic. For example, normal chest pain is interpreted as a heart attack, numbness in the arms is interpreted as a stroke, dizziness is interpreted as fainting. Catastrophizing comments lead to increased anxiety, increased anxiety, and more intense physical symptoms. This is how the first panic attack occurs. The first panic attack attack usually results in the emergency department of the hospital.
Panic Attack Symptoms
There are 13 symptoms of a panic attack, 4 of the symptoms listed below are required for the diagnosis of panic attack. You must be experiencing one of them.
Palpitation Tightness in the Chest
Sweating Alienation
Tremors &nb sp; Burning on the skin, Tingling
Sensation of Suffocation Fear of Going Crazy
Numbness Hot Flash
Fear of Death Dizziness
Nausea
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Panic Disorder or Panic Attack?
If you have ever had a panic attack, that is, feeling of suffocation, breathlessness, sweating, dizziness, fear of death, fainting If you have ever experienced fear in the form of a seizure, it is called a panic attack. If you constantly expect an attack after a panic attack, if you constantly worry about an attack in your mind, if you constantly focus on your body and show avoidance behaviors, you are now experiencing panic disorder.
How to Have a Panic Attack? Does it occur?
Symptoms such as feeling of suffocation, heart palpitations, feeling of numbness, dizziness would be present in the body before the panic attack. But since it is not the focal point, it does not affect the person. With the panic attack, the body begins to interpret these reactions in a catastrophizing way. strong>
H rapid breathing Thought I'm Choking
Heart Palpitations I'm having a heart attack
Numbness in the arms I'm having a stroke
Dizziness Fainting
Alienation from self and surroundings I'm going crazy, I'm losing control
Panic At the first moment of the attack, thoughts similar to those above pass through the mind in response to the body's reactions. These thoughts will now cause your body to be your constant focus for the day. As clients put it, it's as if a voice in your head is constantly telling you the following
'don't take the elevator/subway, don't go to the shopping mall, don't be alone, take your medications with you, don't go out alone'
Is There a Treatment for Panic Attacks?
Yes, panic attacks are a treatable disorder.
Is it possible to be treated without medication? Panic attack is a disorder that can be treated even without medication.
How to Treat a Panic Attack?
Avoidance and safety-providing behaviors are a short-term relief during a panic attack. It provides relief, but it causes panic disorder to narrow the person's life and cause the disease to last longer.
It causes the disease to increase its effect over the years and to experience the disease as if there is no solution.
Avoidance and security-seeking behavior. Not doing this, for example, letting him get into the elevator, being able to go out alone, not running to the hospital during an attack is an important step in overcoming panic disorder.
It is important to learn 2 important methods during a panic attack. First, clients panic During an attack, people usually breathe quickly and through their mouth, which is an incorrect breathing method. It becomes easier to control a panic attack with correct breathing exercise.
How to do correct breathing exercise?
1 Breathe slowly and deeply through your nose.
2 Hold the breath in for a while.
3 Then slowly exhale through the mouth.
This breathing exercise helps you cope with the feeling of "I don't have enough breath, I can't breathe" during a panic attack, quickly. It allows you to avoid the dizziness you experience due to breathing and to see that your palpitations are normal.
The second important method is; During a panic attack, thoughts of "I'm going crazy, I'm dying, I'm having a stroke" often occur in the mind. And you believe these thoughts very much during the attack, and therefore you resort to solutions such as escaping from the environment, taking medication or going to the doctor. It is important to realize that these thoughts may not be real during a panic attack, and to see that the panic attack will pass without escaping from the environment. Enabling you to see that anxiety decreases without leaving your environment is one of the important stages in therapy. This exercise should be done step by step with the help and plan of the therapist. If it is done without the therapist's plan and help, it may cause further anxiety.
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