Symptoms of Anxiety Attacks: Physical Sensations

For most people, the symptoms of anxiety attacks feel like a physical collapse to the point that they feel that might be extremely ill or even dying:

 Respiration: You're very conscious of each breath you take and although your rate of breathing increases, it also becomes more shallow. Catching your breath is difficult and the sensation of feeling smothered or suffocating is common.

 The Heart: One of the scariest symptoms is chest pain, tightness and pressure. Your heart may beat very hard or fast and feel like it could jump out of your chest. Or you may experience palpitations, where it skips a beat or two and feels like it's flopping around.

 The Head: Hyperventilation (over-breathing) results in dizziness and lightheadedness. Your vision may blur or you might have ringing in your ears. You could feel unsteady as if things are whirling around or as though your head is swimming and this adds to the fear that you might faint or pass out.

 The Throat: Muscles in your throat contract which leads to a feeling of being choked or strangled. Your mouth is dry and it may feel as if there's a lump stuck in the back of your throat that stops your ability to swallow.

 The Stomach: Butterflies or tightness as if you've been punched is common in the abdominal area, along with feeling bloated or nauseous. Painful diarrhea and a lack of appetite may leave a tinny or metallic taste in your mouth.

 The Whole Body: Excessive sweating from hot or cold flashes can leave you drenched for no apparent reason. You might feel a trembling deep inside or you may be unable to control the outward shaking of your body. Numbness or a burning sensation is common and your hands and feet might tingle with pins and needles.

 The Mind: It's difficult to concentrate and your thoughts are running at a hundred miles an hour. Disoriented and confused, it feels like you're living in a time warp where the world around you isn't real (derealization). You may feel cut off from your surroundings as if you're underwater and everything is out of reach (depersonalization). Thoughts of having a heart attack, losing your mind, dying, and becoming trapped are all very common fears for anyone having a panic attack.

 Now keep in mind that most people do not experience all 13 symptoms of anxiety attacks at once.  A panic attack is made up of any combination of at least 4 of the 13 characteristic ingredients.  But if you have the facts about all 13 symptoms you can begin to map what is happening to you and reassure yourself that you really will not die from any of the panic attack symptoms.  Having a map of the forest doesn't automatically put you back on the right trail and understanding panic symptoms doesn't necessarily stop them.  But factual knowledge of the real physical symptoms is one of the first steps toward understanding what causes  panic attacks.  

Weather Forecasting as a Metaphor for Awareness of the Symptoms of Anxiety Attacks

 Understanding what causes panic attacks to the point that those same causes can be controlled is like learning to become skilled in understanding the ins and outs of climate, wind, storms and various other weather patterns. If it is a bright sunny day with clear blue skies and I haven’t yet heard the weather news, I can be caught off guard by the coming storm. Not so the weatherman. He has honed his skills at seeing the data on the screen and interpreting what it means. If I were shown the same data, the same computer displays, I wouldn’t know what it means. This is not a problem, though, because I don’t need to develop these skills. There are other ways for me to know what all those numbers mean: I just check the news on the web or the morning newscast.

 Forecasting the Symptoms of Anxiety Attacks Involves Learning to Interpret the Thoughts and Feelings Displayed on the Screen of Your Mind

Knowing that a storm is coming is important because it allow you to make different decisions. “Mayby we should post-pone our camping weekend.” Or, “I’ve decided to not do yard work tomorrow, because a storm is coming.” If you are a person that doesn’t listen to the weather reports you may consider learning a different way of making those same decisions by checking the news first.

If you suffer from panic attacks over an extended period of time, then I already feel like I know you. How can this be? In my experience people suffering from panic attacks have a style of making decisions. I have a hunch that you oscillate between fearing panic attacks too much (panic about panic), or ignoring your fears entirely. I also suspect that you have had some life experiences where you have had to be strong for a prolonged period of time. This may have even happened before you were old enough to have such challenges. To cope with it all you rightly learned how to ignore your own feelings of distress and concern. All your energies were devoted just to getting through whatever is next. But when the electricity of the first symptoms of anxiety attacks begin to break through, the fear of panic itself is what causes panic attacks to accelerate. (What causes panic attacks? Panic attacks, of course!)

 What Causes Panic Attacks? Lack of Emotional Intelligence Prevents Forcasting the Symptoms of Anxiety Attacks

Overcoming panic attacks involves learning to read the dials and gauges of your thoughts and emotions and be discerning. It means learning about which of your fear sensations you need to roll with, which one’s are a signal to run for your life, and which ones require some scaled-down combination of each extreme. In a nutshell, the emotional intelligence required to overcome panic attacks involves self-awareness.

 

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