Stop Panic Attacks-Learn how to control your fear of them

A panic attack is one of the most frightening and debilitating experiences a person may have in his or her life. The physical and emotional symptoms of a panic attack are so intense and overwhelming and strike so unexpectedly that you really feel out of control and may lose all sense of reality. During a panic attack, it is very common for people to think they are having a heart attack, fainting, losing their mind, even dying! While a panic attack usually only lasts a few minutes, the emotions related to it affect you for much, much longer.

At some point in the past, probably as a teenager, you had your first panic attack. It probably occured as a result of a traumatic event, or of high levels of stress which your mind could not deal with in any other way. It was such a scary and paralyzing experience that it permanently marked your brain. You would like never to feel that way again, so you may begin to avoid situations like the one which triggered your first anxiety crisis. Subsequent panic attacks leave you more and more frightened of the next one lashing out suddenly. Eventually, this pattern of avoidance, may reach the point where just the thought of being involved in a situation similar to the one you associate with your first panic attack may actually trigger future ones. This is called the anxiety thought loop, when the fear of another panic attack actually makes it happen.

So, how do you break this vicious cycle? How do you cope with your anxiety and the effect it has on your life, on your freedom?

Panic Attacks Cannot Exist if You Do Not Fear Them!

Do you remember your irrational fears as a child? Huddled up in bed, terrified of horrible monsters lurking under it, ready to pounce on you? How did you eventually overcome these fears and realize that these creatures cannot harm you because they simply do not exist? Reverting to these childhood memories, you might recall giving up fight, closing your eyes and surrendering to absolute terror. Waiting for the beast to strike, you may have thought that anything would be better than this endless waiting for something terrible to happen night after night. So you told yourself "Ok. I can't stand this any longer, let it come and do whatever it likes to me and get it over with. I'm dead. But... if it doesn't kill me in the next 10 seconds, if I can just survive for ten more seconds, then I' m safe!" So you counted the seconds, and after counting to ten and nothing happened, maybe you went up to fifteen or twenty, just to make sure. Then what? What happened after the ten or twenty seconds during which you decided to give full control to the nightmarish creature lurking in your room? Nothing. Yes, that's right, absolutely nothing! You eventually opened your eyes, stilll alive, no monster in the room and most of all, no more fear left in you! Because what you were fighting all along, what you were afraid of all along, was your fear of them! If you didn't fear them, they did not exist!

The way to stop panic attacks is similar, in the sense that you are fearing what may happen to you during such a crisis. A panic attack is nothing more than you being afraid of yourself. If there was a way for you to stop fearing your emotions and possible reactions in the event of a panic attack, then you would have no more panic attacks! Panic attacks do not exist if you don't fear them! The only way to stop your panic and cure your anxiety for good, is to let your fear take over completely and get to the bottom of whatever is there. Accept your panic attack, stop fighting it, let it do whatever it likes but for a limited time period, say 20 seconds. If it cannot harm you in these twenty seconds, while you have given it full control, then it does not have the power to harm you, not ever. However terrifying it may seem especially the first time you try it, you must be determined to follow your fear to its source and to everything unimaginable you think may happen to you. This is the source of all your fears: losing control, becoming tongue-tied during a public speech, having a heart attack, dying even.

What happens after the 20 seconds will surprise you. Because nothing happens. You come to realize that your fear was unjustified and the panic attacks are revealed for what they really are, nothing more than a vicious cycle of fear, a thought process, an endless anxiety loop! What comes after this realization is a sense of immediate relief and absolute calm. No more fear. In your decision to stop fighting and see what is at the bottom of your fear, you find out that there is absolutely nothing there. This realization will enable you to never fear another panic attack ever again, because now you know that it is powerless to harm you. And because you are no longer afraid of it, you will never have another panic attack again. No more monsters waiting to catch you unawares in the dead of night!
Effectively taking control of your fear enables you to permanently eliminate your panic attacks.

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Sometimes people have the impression that their experience of anxiety is like being hooked up to an electroshock machine and that it just takes a flick of the anxiety switch to cause a flood leading to a full blown panic attack.

People in this situation often feel that are lucky to make it through the day without that switch been flicked but in the back of their mind they fear that it could happen at any moment day or night. They remain on high alert anticipating it. Anticipating the big one!

In fact most people who experience panic attacks fear it in this manner. It is natural for people to think this way as often the panic attacks come forcefully out of the blue.

The truth of the situation is however different. A panic attack does not lurk in the background waiting to pounce, it can feel that way in your mind if you are anxious but that is not how it really works.

Panic attacks are actually something we decide to initiate when we feel out of control. It begins possibly with a skipped heart beat or tightness around the chest, it is then that your mind fires off a thought warning that these sensations are very unusual and signal a dangerous event that needs urgent medical attention.

The thought that triggers almost all panic attacks is :

"This is too much , I cannot handle this," Then the adrenaline starts to really pump.

"Ah I was right, look my body is going into a fit.

"I am terrified by what is about to happen. HELP,- PANIC ATTACK !"

The severity of the panic attack is directly related to how you are feeling at that time.

If you are exhausted physically, mentally or emotionally then you are more vulnerable to feeling anxious.

After the panic attack has run its course, it is followed by a prolonged period of general anxiety. During this time the person fears that the panic switch might go off again at any moment sending them into another tailspin of high anxiety.

When you feel this way it is very difficult to force a relaxed state of mind through will power (as some other methods would have you do).

So what can you do to stop the mind overreacting to these situations and not initiate the panic attack? Well most of this is about your mind reacting to false signals, so the trick is to train yourself to recognize these false signals for what they and thus shatter the illusion that there is a danger.
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