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…

So let me give you some details on what symptoms I usually experience when I have this type of panic attack. Yes, I have multiple types of them (food related, heart related and breathing related).

Usually when I eat and have this type of anxiety or panic attack I experience feeling of food getting stuck in the throat. This is the most disappointing of all panic attacks I have since it makes eating a challenging process and also makes it hard to give your body all required vitamins and minerals.

Other usual symptoms are inability to belch. It sounds like a strage symptoms but it really is a symptom. You want to belch and you feel like you need to but you can’t. My theory is that it happens because of tension in throat muscles.

It was a while since I decided to start this blog. It looks like it is finally time to do it. It is now years since I started struggling with panic attacks and anxiety. I think now I should have enough useful information to share. I won’t write full history of my panic attacks in one one post but spread it over multiple posts. So keep reading.

I hope you will enjoy reading my panic attack and anxiety blog and will find something useful here!

Welcome!!!