Coping with Anxiety and Panic Attacks.

“No panic” yesterday got compensated by panic today. It wasn’t that bad at all but wasn’t nice too. Most of the day was fine except of the evening when I had an attack right after the dinner. I felt that it was coming through the day since I was a little depressed all day. We went to Uwajimaya in the afternoon and on the way back I felt some breathing panic symptoms but was able to control them at the beginning. They slowly dissipated after that. During the dinner I also mostly controlled them but after the dinner I lost tracktion and had to spend couple hours or so trying to calm it down. Playing a little guitar did help since it required me to switch and start thinking about frets and strings instead of my throat, stomach and breathing. Playing guitar is my new way of dealing with panic attacks. So couple more years of panic attacks and I will become a professional guitar player

During my recent conversation with psychoterapist we spoke about preventing or at least reducing panic attacks by switching to something else. The difference between someone with panic attacks and someone without is not in amount of stress that they receive or their reaction to that stress. It is how they perceive symptoms of this stress. A person without a tendency to panic attacks will experience the symptoms and forget about them in several minutes while a person with panic attack will start thinking that something is seriously wrong.

Thinking about symptoms and concentrating on them usually makes you more sensible and any change in symptoms will make you scared. Changes in symptoms will cause you to worry more and you will concentrate on them even more causing them to worsen. And worsening of the symptoms will make you more worried and etc., etc., etc. You know this loop for sure :).

The only effective way I found to break it (which not always works but at least sometimes it does) is to switch your attention to something else. And you should switch to something complex enough to take all your attention. For example driving is not an option since it just takes part of your attention. Reading a book is a good choice in my case since I cannot think about anything else while I’m reading.

It is interesting that writing a blog is not enough to switch my attention completely. I overdid on beer and smoothie today and my stomach doesn’t feel that good. Now I have this feeling that something is coming up to my throat. And when I’m writing it actually becomes worse. I’m starting to feel shortness of breath symptom too. So I have to switch to something else from time to time (read other blogs).

I know that it is just a milk and nothing wrong with my throat but even though I know this it won’t go away unless I switch my attention from it and be able to relax…

Will keep practicing…

I don’t know how I developed this habit and why it was so helpful to me but the best way for me to get rid of panic attack is to stand in the bathtub with about 3-4 inches of warm water in it.

I think it is related to the fact that most of my panic attacks causes my legs and arms to get cold. And warming them helps a great deal.

I also noticed that in the cold environment it is much easier for me to get into panic attack state.