Anxiety Attack Symptoms

I get asked a lot about how to stop anxiety attacks and what options there are for overcoming anxiety. The first thing you need to do is to acknowledge that you're having these attacks, then you'll be able to look at ways of dealing with them - which means you'll be one step closer to stop anxiety attacks.

When you fully acknowledge your anxiety attacks and really get to know all about them, you must then learn to accept them. By this I mean removing all your resistance towards them. In the past, you have feared them and tried to put up a barrier towards them (which you cowered behind). You tried to hide from the monster which you didn't know anything about but which frightened you. Once you know the nature of the beast you already begin to remove the fear.

You know that no harm will come to you, so now if you have an anxiety attack you can accept it for what it is - too much adrenalin, and you can let it happen without resistance. Just go with it until it has worn itself out; until the hormone has finished swishing around your system. You know chat trying to suppress it doesn't help, and only increases your anxiety symptoms. You know it will pass, so let it happen. Does it matter if you have a panic attack? It's unpleasant, but does it really matter now that you know it isn't life-threatening? At the moment you might probably think that it matters very much. In time, you will come to realize that it doesn't.

Acknowledging and accepting will take a while to happen. How much depends on you - we all go at our own pace. But since it takes three weeks to establish a habit and six weeks to break one, you can see it may take time before the overwhelming fear of panic attacks stops. But time does pass and they will eventually be behind you. When I was at school and having to revise hard for exams (and hating it) I cheered myself up enormously by thinking that in two or three months' time they would all be behind me; even any disappointments about the results would be gone in time. Visualize yourself at some stage in the future, happy and without your panic attacks.

Did you know that drinking (or eating) too much caffeine can bring on feeling of anxiety attacks symptoms?

It's true - if you drink a lot of high caffeine drinks each day (like tea, coffee, cola drinks etc) it can easily bring on a lot of the various symptoms of anxiety.

The unfortunate thing is that a lot of doctors either don't realise this, or simply neglect to ask their patient, who is coming in for help with anxiety attack symptoms, about how much caffeine they may be consuming each day.

An army officer I know of was taking "calm-down" drugs for over 14 months with virtually no effect. He was suffering dizziness, "stomach butterflies", diarrhea, and several other mild anxiety symptoms.

Fortunately the army medical officer was aware of the impact of caffeine on anxiety, and suggested he reduce his coffee intake down from his current 14 cups a day to 3 or 4 at most. With a couple of days he started to notice a distinct improvement in his condition, and no longer needed the relaxant over-the-counter drugs he was taking.

So if your experiencing only mild anxiety symptoms, first check on your caffeine intake, or at leat mention it to your doctor.