I am sure there are many of you besides myself who have experience a state of fear or mild panic attacks. However, for those of you that have no experienced severe fear, anxiety or severe panic attacks, it is very difficult to know how to help someone struggling through that moment. During those moments of a state of panic that you yourself is not experiencing, and not knowing what to do or say can be just as equally devastating because it makes you feel hopeless. A panic disorder is what most books, doctors and psychologist categorize as a frequent period of anxiety and occasional attacks of rapid breathing, increased heart rate, sweating and trembling. It's an extreme arousal of the sympathetic nervous system. I have personally have had a panic attack, just not to the extreme, my mom on the other had has had very severe panic attacks. There was this one time, she was driving home after work, and all of a sudden her breathing became very loud, unsteady, rapid, her eyes got wide, her hands started shaking and she hit one of those giant dumpster trash cans, and scratched the side of the car really bad, well when she got home her body was shaking so bad she crawled under our bread counter and stayed there for awhile hugging her knees. My dad had to try and talk her out of that state for about ten minutes, really it was crazy.
The WebMD website gave an awesome insight of panic disorders, the symptoms to look at. A few symptoms besides the ones I listed above include:
- "Racing" heart
- Feeling weak, faint, or dizzy
- Tingling or numbness in the hands and fingers
- Sense of terror, or impending doom or death
- Feeling sweaty or having chills
- Chest pains
- Breathing difficulties
- Feeling a loss of control
What I found really interesting and fascinating was the fact that people who have panic attacks have a lot of fear because they never know when they might have another attack. I did not know however that it affects over 2 millions people in the U.S between 18 and 54.
5 comments:
I have had panic attacks before also. I have had them when I am excercising or when I am having an argument. It feels horrible because you feel like you cant catch your breath, like your are suffocating. My husband has had to ask me if he needs to call an ambulance but I have told him no. I just stop what I am doing, lay down (depending on where I was) and put a cold towel or ice bag on my head.
After also reading about panic disorders and panic attacks i now know that i have experienced a panic attack myself. I have a huge fear of rats and once when i saw one very close i came into this panick attack. It was horrible! I was so scared i started breathing rapidly, i was shaking, i couldn't talk, and i couldn't get over the fear for about 10 minutes. It is a horrible experience that i would not like to experience again.
i cant really say that i suffer from intense panic attacks or intense anxiety attacks, but i do get some mild anxiety at times. so they are not as powerful as a panic disorder can get to be, but they still are scary.
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