How Do I Stop Panic Attacks?
How do I stop panic attacks was a question I used to ask myself in desperation. I used to suffer from agoraphobia you see and for several years I wasn't able to travel very far from my home without becoming anxious. My anxiety would increase until it would erupt into a full blown panic attack.
I've never liked drugs and have always shunned them in favour of natural alternatives. I discovered there were herbal remedies which helped such as the Bach Flower Rescue Remedy. But I realised that these were just aids to help me over the worst times and weren't permanent cures.
How Do I Stop Panic Attacks? Click here for the answer!
Thanks to the internet people like me can now search for answers to the question how do I stop panic attacks? The answer lies in learning how to control your anxiety so that it is stopped before it becomes out of control and becomes a panic attack. A panic attack is rather like when a dam bursts except it's anxiety rather than water that can no longer be contained. Panic attacks and anxiety are natural and were nature's way of alerting us to danger when we lived in hunter gatherer times. But in this day and age with so many sources of stress this response can become all too easily triggered in some sensitive individuals.
Panic attacks and anxiety occur when the natural fight or flight response is triggered by a stressful situation. This response is controlled by a part of the brain called the amygdala. This is like a sensor that detects danger and makes you anxious so that you can takes steps to ensure your safety. But the amygdala if over stimulated can become conditioned to trigger anxiety too easily so that you respond fearfully to situations that aren't really life threatening. The answer to the how do I stop panic attacks question is to retrain the amygdala so that it does not react in this way to non threatening situations.
Once the amygdala begins to trigger feelings of anxiety you can interrupt the process to break the adrenaline cycle that leads to the panic attack. You have a sympathetic nervous system that accelerates your heart and breathing and you have the parasympathetic nervous system that slows these processes back down again when danger has passed. Any exercises that engage the parasympathetic nervous system will reverse the chain of biological changes that culminate in a panic attacks This is why breathing techniques such as those used in yoga and meditation are so effective at helping people cope with panic attacks and anxiety.
NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) techniques are also highly effective as they teach you to break the negative thought patterns that trigger the amygdala and replace them with more beneficial thought patterns that will keep you calm instead. In order to learn techniques such as these I highly recommend either The Linden Method and Panic Away as these are step by step programs designed to help you overcome panic attacks and anxiety.