Discovering The Cause Of Panic Attacks

The short and obvious answer: panic attacks are caused by high anxiety. But, what exactly is anxiety? Understanding how anxiety crops up will help you defeat panic attacks.

There are many myths out there about the way anxiety effects are health. One of those myths is the ever popular “Anxiety can lead to life threatening conditions.”

What is Anxiety

Anxiety is defined as a state of apprehension or fear resulting from the anticipation of a real or imagined threat, event, or situation. It is one of the most common human emotions experienced by people at some point in their lives.

Only people who have experienced a panic attack first hand really understand the terrifying nature of the experience. The racing heart rate, blurred vision, dizziness, tingling or “pins and needles” sensations in your hands, arms and/or legs, and breathlessness. And that’s just for starters.

When these sensations occur and people do not understand why, they feel they have contracted an illness, or a serious mental condition. The threat of losing complete control seems very real and naturally very terrifying.

A Root Cause of Panic Attacks - The Fight or Flight Response

I am sure most people have heard of the fight or flight response as an explanation for one of the root causes of panic attacks. Have you made the connection between this response and the unusual sensations you experience during and after a panic attack episode?

Anxiety, and the ensuing panic attack is a response to a real (or imagined) potentially dangerous situation - its main function is to protect us from danger. Quite ironic perhaps, seeing as the anxiety is actually making us feel very frightened.

However, the anxiety that the fight or flight response created was vital in the daily survival of our ancient ancestors - when faced with some danger, an automatic response would take over that propelled them to take immediate action such as attack or run. Even in today’s hectic world, this is still a necessary mechanism. It comes in useful when you must respond to a real threat within a split second.

Whenever we find ourselves in a potentially dangerous situation, the brain sends specific triggers to the nervous system. This system is responsible for gearing us up to take action (in this case to either fight or run), and the same system is also responsible for calming us down after the situation has been dealt with. To carry out these two vital functions, our nervous system has two subsections, the sympathetic system and the parasympathetic system.

The sympathetic system is responsible for releasing the adrenaline, which functions as the body’s chemical messengers to keep the activity going. After a period of time, the parasympathetic nervous system gets called into action. Its role is to return the body to normal functioning once the perceived danger is gone. The parasympathetic system is the system we all know and love, because it returns us to a calm relaxed state.

Remaining Calm Comes Naturally

When we engage in a coping strategy that we have learned, for example, a relaxation technique, we are in fact willing the parasympathetic nervous system into action. A good thing to remember is that this system will be brought into action at some stage whether we will it or not. The body cannot continue in an ever-increasing spiral of anxiety. It reaches a point where it simply must kick in, relaxing the body. This is one of the many built-in protection systems our bodies have for survival.

So next time you have a panic attack, try to remember that they cannot do you any physical harm. Your mind will undoubtedly make the sensations last much longer than your body would ever have intended, but sooner or later, everything will start to calm down again. I appreciate that’s little comfort when experiencing an attack, having been there myself, but use it to reassure yourself.

A fascinating feature of the “fight or flight” mechanism is that blood (which is channeled from areas where it is currently not needed by a tightening of the blood vessels) is brought to areas where it is urgently needed.

A prime example is when we are anticipating some form of physical attack - whether it’s a response to an attacker coming at us with a knife, or being confronted by a sabre toothed tiger. Blood will be “pulled” from extremities like fingers, toes and the skin, and pumped into the major muscle groups like the legs and arms, to help your body prepare for action - whatever that action may be.

This exact natural bodily reaction is a lot of people feel tingling and even numbness sensations during a panic attack. The problem is that these symptoms are very easy to interpret as a serious health condition like a heart attack.

Respiratory Effects

Probably one of the most frightening feelings that a person experiences during a panic attack is the fear of smothering or suffocating. Tightness in the chest and throat are very common. While most people can understand the fear of loosing control of the ability to breath, speaking from personal experience the anxiety is fueled because what you are really afraid of is your breathing stopping and that you will not be able to recover. The truth is that a panic attack will not stop our breathing.

When you experience a panic attack, you body naturally increases your speed and depth of breathing - your body is gearing up for a fight or flight response, and needs a lot of oxygen to prepare itself. So effectively, you start to hyperventilate, which can lead to feelings of breathlessness, and sensations of suffocating and choking - and even chest pains.

Having experienced extreme panic attacks myself, I remember that on many occasions, I would have this feeling that I couldn’t trust my body to do the breathing for me, so I would have to manually take over and tell myself when to breathe in and when to breathe out. Of course, this didn’t suit my body’s requirement of oxygen and so the sensations would intensify - along with the anxiety. It was only when I employed the technique I will describe for you later, did I let my body continue doing what it does best - running the whole show.

A side-effect of increased breathing, (especially if no actual activity occurs) is that the blood supply to the head is decreased. While such a decrease is only a small amount and is not at all dangerous, it produces a variety of unpleasant but harmless symptoms that include dizziness, blurred vision, confusion, sense of unreality, and hot flushes.

For more information about treating panic attacks visit Wendys site at Anxiety Attacks and claim your free report 7 Steps To Conquer Your Anxiety.