Taking the First Steps to Overcoming Panic Attacks

The first time a person experiences a panic attack they may feel as though they are having a heart attack and that they are in imminent danger of dying then and there. Overcoming panic attacks like these and learning how to stop these terrifying feelings can seem like an insurmountable problem to the person who has just begun to experience them.

While in some cases your panic attacks may be caused by underlying medical conditions, the majority of time the attacks simply manifest themselves out of the blue and can create incredibly intense physical sensations. These physical manifestations can include chest pains, palpitations, dizziness and shortness of breath. Often the person will go straight to their doctor to find out what the cause of these symptoms is, only to be told that there is nothing medically wrong.

While for most of us this reassurance is all that we need to feel fine, others will continue to worry and stress over what will happen the next time they feel this way. They continue to worry until the stress actually causes them to have another panic attack. It is a vicious cycle that there can seem to be no end to. While a doctor can prescribe a medication that will relieve the physical symptoms, it is often up to the patient to gain enough understanding to stop the mental aspect that actually brings on the attack.

Because so much of a panic attack is brought on by a person’s own mind the only way for them to gain control over it is to find out for themselves that it is a mental aberration.  This is not to say that the person does not experience the symptoms, as they most certainly do. The mind becomes convinced that there is a problem and it then releases adrenaline and other chemicals that send the body into the fight or flight mode.

Once the body is in the fight or flight mode, it can experience any number of physical symptoms that are severe enough to send a person to the emergency room. To begin to gain control over a panic attack a person must first learn to accept the fact that they are having one. Once they learn that they are indeed experiencing a panic attack and that no matter how bad it is, it cannot hurt them they are on the way to taking the first step to overcoming panic attacks.

Understanding that you cannot be hurt by a panic attack can help you learn to focus on the feelings that go with it and learn to embrace them. What this means is that you must learn to tell yourself when you feel an attack coming on that it starts in your mind and as such you can learn to control these feelings. You must learn to tell yourself that since it is a creation of your mind that no matter how bad it feels you can deal with it.

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Being able to say these things to yourself is only the first step, at some point you have to be able to stop and think to yourself that these feelings are not going to run your life anymore. By constantly taking this approach you can start to re-educate your mind to trust in reality and the panic attacks will be begin to be further apart and less intense. Eventually you will find that your panic attacks will become a thing of the past and your life will return to normal, leaving the panic attacks as nothing more than a bad memory.