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You
probably know that panic attacks can cause all kinds of symptoms
ranging from nervousness, confusion, feelings of dislocation to
numbness in the hands and legs, faintheadedness and even passing
out, but what you might know is the physical cause of these symptoms
and how to prevent them. This article deals with what causes
these symptoms, one of the major reasons that panic attacks occur
and what you can do help yourself.
Panic
comes from many sources; grief, emotional pain, stress,
anxieties over everyday life etc... We all face these on
one level or another. However, people prone to panic attacks
have two additional factors that make things worse. One
is that their bodies start pumping out to much adrenaline (you
now have the energy to run for hours or to lift a car off the
ground, but instead of burning it off physically you focus all
that energy within your mind and go into overload), and the second
is that when they begin to panic their breathing changes.
In fact, it may be the changes in their breathing patterns that
cause that sudden rush of adrenaline.
I
want to state here and now. I am NOT A DOCTOR. I am
not trying to give you medical advice. I am simply someone
who cares, who has known many many people who are subject to panic
attacks, who has seen the same thing happen over and over again,
and who is offering my opinion on how to reduce the severity of
a panic attack.
Before
explaining more about panic, it's causes and effects I want you
to sit here and try to visualize something:
Imagine
that you are watching a movie. The man on the screen is
trapped underwater in a sinking ship. He's starting to run
out of air. He's trapped between a wall and a heavy piece
of ships furniture. He begins to panic. You can see
him starting to struggle. He's too weak to push the furniture
off. You know he's going to die. Suddenly he finds
the strength, an impossible amount of strength for a normal man,
and he pushes the furniture off. He now tries to swim to
the surface. You can see that he won't make it. The
surface is to far and he doesn't have enough air. He's getting
weaker. His arms and legs are starting to go numb from lack
of oxygen. Suddenly, arms reach down into the water and pulls
him to the surface. He gasps for breath. One giant
breath followed by many small ones. Miracously he has been
saved by other passengers who had made it to the lifeboat.
The
example above demonstrates many aspects of a panic attack.
First it shows the cause of the panic attack. In this case
the cause of the panic attack was being trapped underwater.
The effect of the panic attack was to give him a sudden rush of
adrenaline and energy so that his body could do the impossible
- move the heavy furniture off. Next, you see the man can't
breathe which increases his panic even more. Soon after
you see the effects of too much adrenaline and too little oxygen
as his limbs grow weaker - numb - and he reaches the point where
he is ready to pass out and drown. Finally as he is pulled
from the ocean you can see that he doesn't breathe calmly but
instead breathes in a panic, lots of little short breaths.
As his breathing finally begins to slow you can see him start
to calm down.
This
is exactly what happens during a panic attack. Something
causes you stress, your body thinks there is some kind of emergency
where you will need extra strength or speed and so it reacts by
giving you huge amounts of adrenaline. Since you don't actually
physically burn off the energy it all becomes 'emotional energy',
you panic more, the body sends even more adrenaline and it continues
in a circle. You keep getting more and more energy, but
aren't using it. Then your breathing begins to change.
Instead of long slow (calm) breaths you begin to take lots of
short little (panic) breaths. As is shown below, this causes
a lack of oxygen and then you panic even more (more adrenaline)
and eventually the lack of oxygen causes your limbs to become
numb (like the man in the movie), you get lightheaded, etc...
So what can you do about it?
One
of the keys to controlling a panic attack is understanding the
causes and affects.
First
of course their is understanding that a panic attack starts by
over focusing on something stressful to the point that your body
has a physical reaction. If you can pull your mind towards
something else (go outside, take a cold shower, etc) then maybe
you can avoid the panic attack. But, if you aren't able
to focus on something else, then you need to understand that the
second phase of the panic attack is caused by the change in your
breathing and that you can reduce the severity of the attack by
controlling your breathing. Here's how it works:
Normally,
humans breath slowly and evenly. Air (oxygen) enters through
our mouth and nose, goes down our throats and enters the
lungs. There is pause between breaths while the oxygen (good
air) is absorbed by the lungs and replaced by carbon dioxide (bad
air). Our lungs then push the bad air out through the throat,
then the nose and mouth. Again, the lungs pause so that
the bad air has a chance to blow away and be replaced by good
air. Then we breath in. The key to the whole process
is the pauses "between" breaths, because that's when
our lungs absorb the good air and discard the bad.
During
panic breathing the whole process is changed. As we start
to breathe faster, the air still comes into our mouths, into our
throats and into our lungs, but we don't leave it in our lungs
long enough. The lungs don't have time to absorb all the
oxygen or to get rid of all the carbon dioxide. So now we are
breathing out some of the good air (oxygen) and leaving some of
the bad air (carbon dioxide) in our lungs. The good air/bad
air mix is pushed from our lungs to the throat and to the mouth
and nose. But again, because these are short (fast) breaths,
we don't allow all the bad air to leave our bodies. Some of it
is still inside us, and see start sucking it back in. Make sense?
Let's
look at it like this... Let's say that a man has a job of
carrying a bucket of water in one direction, dumping it, and then
filling it with dirt and carrying it in the other direction.
Again at the beginning he rinses out the bucket and gets clean
water. As long as he goes along slowly he is carrying clean
water in one direction in and dirt in another. No problem.
But lets say something happens, he feels he is falling behind
at work, his boss is yelling at him, he has an emergency and needs
to get off work early, and he starts to panic. He tries
to rush the process. He runs from one end to another.
He spills water going one way, he spills dirt going the other.
He tries to make up for the spillage by going faster and faster.
Soon he is running spilling almost more than he is carrying.
Now he's really panicked. He doesn't take time to pour all
the water out at one in, then at the other end he doesn't pour
out the dirt. He's running back and forth with a bucket
of mud and accomplishing nothing except making his panic attack
even worse. That's what happens to you when you panic
and don't breather right, you keep breathing dirty air over and
over again and you begin to feel oxygen starved like the man in
the movie earlier. Your muscles get weak, you feel numb,
you are on the verge of collapse. What should you do?
Breathe
slowly and deeply.
Many
studies have been done on the relationship between panic attacks
and breathing, and what has been most commonly noted is that nervous
people tend to breathe sort quick breaths from their chests while
calm people breathe deeply and slowly from their abdomen.
HOW TO BREATH
Place
a hand on your abdomen (just below your rib cage), breathe in
slowly (count of five), you should feel your hand rise. Pause.
Then breathe out slowly (Count of five), and hand should lower
slightly. Pause. Then do it over again.
Short
breaths cause panic (an increase in adrenaline).
Long breaths create calm (an actual chemical reaction occurs in
your body)
Short
breaths cause oxygen starvation (more panic), numbness in the
hands and arms, lightheadedness, a feeling as though everything
is going dark and can make you pass out.
Long
breaths can make you feel better.
Practice
Long Deep Breaths Ten minutes a day and it will become a habit,
and you will know what to do next time you start to feel panicked.
Great
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