Panic Attack Anxiety Disorder

You remember the Cable series, The Sopranos? Do you remember what it was that brought Tony into psychiatric therapy with Dr. Malfi to begin with? Yeah, that's right. He was suffering from panic attack anxiety disorder.

Turns out the stress of a life of crime wasn't healthy. Go figure, huh?

But you don't have to be a gangster who goes to work everyday with a bunch of sociopaths and thugs to get an anxiety disorder. You can get it from the everyday stresses of most any life. Anxiety Disorder affects a large number of Americans and many, just like Tony Soprano, don't even know what they have.

Because the symptoms mimic a heart attack, most people think that's what's causing their problems. But this is no laughing matter. You might even say it's as serious as a heart attack.

Here's what you need to know:

Psychological Symptoms:

The main symptom of a panic attack is intense and overwhelming fear. You feel as if you could die at any second, and often during an attack, you might actually be convinced that you are dying.

Some people, when they are in the midst of a panic attack, feel as if they are losing their minds. These intense feelings and the loss of control that comes with them make sufferers believe that their minds are coming completely loose from their bodies.

Less often, some people will feel as they are in a dream like state or as if things are completely unreal. This dream like state only adds to their anxiety and intensifies the attacks.

Physical Symptoms:

The physical symptoms of a panic attack will often mask the psychological ones. So some sufferers will be rushed to the emergency room only to find that the doctors cannot find anything physically wrong with them.

But the physical symptoms are distinctive in themselves. Typically, during an attack the sufferer will experience increased heart rate, trembling, hot or cold flashes, headaches and nausea.

Treatment:

The main treatment for panic attack anxiety disorder is behavior therapy. Often by talking through the problem you come to a better understanding of the causes of your condition and of the triggers for your attacks. More often than not, the therapist will also prescribe an anti-depression medication during your therapy to help you with the attacks while you are still working through the issues that caused them. These drug therapies are very effective at stopping the symptoms but they do not really treat the underlying problems.

The Brown Bag Method: Another useful technique for helping you to cope with panic attacks is called "the brown bag method". You simply have a friend accompany you into a quiet room during the onset of one of your attacks. The friend then gives you moral support while you regulate your respiratory system by breathing in and out of a brown bag. Many sufferers find that this method helps them to bring their attacks under control. This is only a technique for dealing with the onset, however. It does not actually deal with the underlying issues that cause them in the first place.

The first step in learning to deal with your anxiety disorder, however, is doing exactly what you are doing right now, researching your problem. Often, as you come to a better understanding of exactly how these disorders work, you will already start to see the effects of your new understanding on the quality of your panic attacks. When you first experience them, part of what makes them so intense is the fact that you don't really know what is happening to you. But as you begin to understand that what you are having is a panic attack, the attack itself loses a great deal of its intensity.

So be sure that you continue to inform yourself about your condition and look to find the help that you need in order to overcome the underlying conditions of your anxiety disorder.

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