The short
and obvious answer: panic attacks are caused by high anxiety. But, what
exactly is anxiety? Understanding how anxiety crops up will help you
defeat panic attacks.
One of the biggest myths surrounding anxiety
is that it is harmful and can lead to a number of various
life-threatening conditions.
Definition of
Anxiety
Anxiety
is defined as a state of apprehension or fear resulting from the
anticipation of a real or imagined threat, event, or situation. It is
one of the most common human emotions experienced by people at some
point in their lives.
However, most people who have never
experienced a panic attack, or extreme anxiety, fail to realize the
terrifying nature of the experience. Extreme dizziness, blurred vision,
tingling and feelings of breathlessness—and that’s just the tip of the
iceberg!
When these sensations occur and people do not understand
why, they feel they have contracted an illness, or a serious mental
condition. The threat of losing complete control seems very real and
naturally very terrifying.
Fight/Flight Response: One of the root causes of panic attacks?
I
am sure most of you have heard of the fight/flight response as an
explanation for one of the root causes of panic attacks. Have you made
the connection between this response and the unusual sensations you
experience during and after a panic attack episode?
Anxiety is a
response to a danger or threat. It is so named because all of its
effects are aimed toward either fighting or fleeing from the danger.
Thus, the sole purpose of anxiety is to protect the individual from
harm. This may seem ironic given that you no doubt feel your anxiety is
actually causing you great harm…perhaps the most significant of all the
causes of panic attacks.
However, the anxiety that the
fight/flight response created was vital in the daily survival of our
ancient ancestors—when faced with some danger, an automatic response
would take over that propelled them to take immediate action such as
attack or run. Even in today’s hectic world, this is still a necessary
mechanism. It comes in useful when you must respond to a real threat
within a split second.
Anxiety is a built-in mechanism to protect
us from danger. Interestingly, it is a mechanism that protects but does
not harm—an important point that will be elaborated upon later.
The
Physical Manifestations of a Panic Attack: Other pieces of the puzzle
to understand the causes of panic attacks. Nervousness and Chemical
Effects…
When confronted with danger, the brain sends signals to a
section of the nervous system. It is this system that is responsible
for gearing the body up for action and also calms the body down and
restores equilibrium. To carry out these two vital functions, the
autonomic nervous system has two subsections, the sympathetic nervous
system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
Although I don’t
want to become too “scientific,” having a basic understanding of the
sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system will help you understand
the causes of panic attacks.
The sympathetic nervous system is the
one we tend to know all too much about because it primes our body for
action, readies us for the “fight or flight” response, while the
parasympathetic nervous system is the one we love dearly as it serves as
our restoring system, which returns the body to its normal state.
When
either of these systems is activated, they stimulate the whole body,
which has an “all or nothing” effect. This explains why when a panic
attack occurs, the individual often feels a number of different
sensations throughout the body.
The sympathetic system is
responsible for releasing the adrenaline from the adrenal glands on the
kidneys. These are small glands located just above the kidneys. Less
known, however, is that the adrenal glands also release adrenaline,
which functions as the body’s chemical messengers to keep the activity
going. When a panic attack begins, it does not switch off as easily as
it is turned on. There is always a period of what would seem increased
or continued anxiety, as these messengers travel throughout the body.
Think of them as one of the physiological causes of panic attacks, if
you will.
After a period of time, the parasympathetic nervous
system gets called into action. Its role is to return the body to normal
functioning once the perceived danger is gone. The parasympathetic
system is the system we all know and love, because it returns us to a
calm relaxed state.
When we engage in a coping strategy that we
have learned, for example, a relaxation technique, we are in fact
willing the parasympathetic nervous system into action. A good thing to
remember is that this system will be brought into action at some stage
whether we will it or not. The body cannot continue in an
ever-increasing spiral of anxiety. It reaches a point where it simply
must kick in, relaxing the body. This is one of the many built-in
protection systems our bodies have for survival.
You can do your
best with worrying thoughts, keeping the sympathetic nervous system
going, but eventually it stops. In time, it becomes a little smarter
than us, and realizes that there really is no danger. Our bodies are
incredibly intelligent—modern science is always discovering amazing
patterns of intelligence that run throughout the cells of our body. Our
body seems to have infinite ways of dealing with the most complicated
array of functions we take for granted. Rest assured that your body’s
primary goal is to keep you alive and well.
Not so convinced?
Try
holding your breath for as long as you can. No matter how strong your
mental will is, it can never override the will of the body. This is good
news—no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that you are gong
to die from a panic attack, you won’t. Your body will override that fear
and search for a state of balance. There has never been a reported
incident of someone dying from a panic attack.
Remember this next
time you have a panic attack; he causes of panic attacks cannot do you
any physical harm. Your mind may make the sensations continue longer
than the body intended, but eventually everything will return to a state
of balance. In fact, balance (homeostasis) is what our body continually
strives for.
The interference for your body is nothing more than
the sensations of doing rigorous exercise. Our body is not alarmed by
these symptoms. Why should it be? It knows its own capability. It’s our
thinking minds that panic, which overreact and scream in sheer terror!
We tend to fear the worst and exaggerate our own sensations. A quickened
heart beat becomes a heart attack. An overactive mind seems like a
close shave with schizophrenia. Is it our fault? Not really—we are
simply diagnosing from poor information.
Cardiovascular Effects
Activity in the sympathetic nervous system increases our heartbeat rate,
speeds up the blood flow throughout the body, ensures all areas are
well supplied with oxygen and that waste products are removed. This
happens in order to prime the body for action.
A fascinating
feature of the “fight or flight” mechanism is that blood (which is
channelled from areas where it is currently not needed by a tightening
of the blood vessels) is brought to areas where it is urgently needed.
For
example, should there be a physical attack, blood drains from the skin,
fingers, and toes so that less blood is lost, and is moved to “active
areas” such as the thighs and biceps to help the body prepare for
action.
This is why many feel numbness and tingling during a
panic attack-often misinterpreted as some serious health risk-such as the
precursor to a heart attack. Interestingly, most people who suffer from
anxiety often feel they have heart problems. If you are really worried
that such is the case with your situation, visit your doctor and have it
checked out. At least then you can put your mind at rest.
Respiratory Effects
One
of the scariest effects of a panic attack is the fear of suffocating or
smothering. It is very common during a panic attack to feel tightness
in the chest and throat. I’m sure everyone can relate to some fear of
losing control of your breathing. From personal experience, anxiety
grows from the fear that your breathing itself would cease and you would
be unable to recover. Can a panic attack stop our breathing? No.
A
panic attack is associated with an increase in the speed and depth of
breathing. This has obvious importance for the defense of the body since
the tissues need to get more oxygen to prepare for action. The feelings
produced by this increase in breathing, however, can include
breathlessness, hyperventilation, sensations of choking or smothering,
and even pains or tightness in the chest. The real problem is that these
sensations are alien to us, and they feel unnatural.
Having
experienced extreme panic attacks myself, I remember that on many
occasions, I would have this feeling that I couldn’t trust my body to do
the breathing for me, so I would have to manually take over and tell
myself when to breathe in and when to breathe out. Of course, this
didn’t suit my body’s requirement of oxygen and so the sensations would
intensify—along with the anxiety. It was only when I employed the
technique I will describe for you later, did I let the body continue
doing what it does best—running the whole show.
Importantly, a
side-effect of increased breathing, (especially if no actual activity
occurs) is that the blood supply to the head is actually decreased.
While such a decrease is only a small amount and is not at all
dangerous, it produces a variety of unpleasant but harmless symptoms
that include dizziness, blurred vision, confusion, sense of unreality,
and hot flushes.
Other Physical Effects of Panic Attacks:
Now
that we’ve discussed some of the primary physiological causes of panic
attacks, there are a number of other effects that are produced by the
activation of the sympathetic nervous system, none of which are in any
way harmful.
For example, the pupils widen to let in more light,
which may result in blurred vision, or “seeing” stars, etc. There is a
decrease in salivation, resulting in dry mouth. There is decreased
activity in the digestive system, which often produces nausea, a heavy
feeling in the stomach, and even constipation. Finally, many of the
muscle groups tense up in preparation for “fight or flight” and this
results in subjective feelings of tension, sometimes extending to actual
aches and pains, as well as trembling and shaking.
Overall, the
fight/flight response results in a general activation of the whole
bodily metabolism. Thus, one often feels hot and flushed and, because
this process takes a lot of energy, the person generally feels tired and
drained.
Mental Manifestations: Are the causes of panic attacks all in my head? is a question many people wonder to themselves.
The
goal of the fight/flight response is making the individual aware of the
potential danger that may be present. Therefore, when activated, the
mental priority is placed upon searching the surroundings for potential
threats. In this state one is highly-strung, so to speak. It is very
difficult to concentrate on any one activity, as the mind has been
trained to seek all potential threats and not to give up until the
threat has been identified. As soon as the panic hits, many people look
for the quick and easiest exit from their current surroundings, such as
by simply leaving the bank queue and walking outside. Sometimes the
anxiety can heighten, if we perceive that leaving will cause some sort
of social embarrassment.
If you have a panic attack while at the
workplace but feel you must press on with whatever task it is you are
doing, it is quite understandable that you would find it very hard to
concentrate. It is quite common to become agitated and generally
restless in such a situation. Many individuals I have worked with who
have suffered from panic attacks over the years indicated that
artificial light—such as that which comes from computer monitors and
televisions screens—can can be one of the causes of panic attacks by
triggering them or worsen a panic attack, particularly if the person is
feeling tired or run down.
This is worth bearing in mind if you
work for long periods of time on a computer. Regular break reminders
should be set up on your computer to remind you to get up from the desk
and get some fresh air when possible.
In other situations, when
during a panic attack an outside threat cannot normally be found, the
mind turns inwards and begins to contemplate the possible illness the
body or mind could be suffering from. This ranges from thinking it might
have been something you ate at lunch, to the possibility of an oncoming
cardiac arrest.
The burning question is: Why is the fight/flight
response activated during a panic attack even when there is apparently
nothing to be frightened of?
Upon closer examination of the causes
of panic attacks, it would appear that what we are afraid of are the
sensations themselves—we are afraid of the body losing control. These
unexpected physical symptoms create the fear or panic that something is
terribly wrong. Why do you experience the physical symptoms of the
fight/flight response if you are not frightened to begin with? There are
many ways these symptoms can manifest themselves, not just through
fear.
For example, it may be that you have become generally
stressed for some reason in your life, and this stress results in an
increase in the production of adrenaline and other chemicals, which from
time to time, would produce symptoms….and which you perceive as the
causes of panic attacks.
This increased adrenaline can be
maintained chemically in the body, even after the stress has long gone.
Another possibility is diet, which directly affects our level of stress.
Excess caffeine, alcohol, or sugar is known for causing stress in the
body, and is believed to be one of the contributing factors of the
causes of panic attacks (Chapter 5 gives a full discussion on diet and
its importance).
Unresolved emotions are often pointed to as
possible trigger of panic attacks, but it is important to point out that
eliminating panic attacks from your life does not necessarily mean
analyzing your psyche and digging into your subconscious. The “One Move”
technique will teach you to deal with the present moment and defuse the
attack along with removing the underlying anxiety that sparks the
initial anxiety.
Learn more
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4. Cancel all your phone accounts immediately, including mobiles. Get
new numbers, or change your phone number to an unlisted one. Remember,
you can now afford to throw your new iPhone, Samsung Galaxy or
Blackberry away and buy another!
