The sensations accompanying a typical panic attack can be so frightening that majority of people experiencing them is convinced that they will either faint, loose control or even die. This is because they’re not used to feeling this way and misinterpret the signals sent by their bodies.
In this article I will discuss the most common symptoms of panic attacks and explain how and why they are caused. This will help you better understand the whole process and hopefully reduce your anxiety about it.
What is the true role of anxiety in our lives?
Have you ever thought what is the purpose of anxiety? What role does it play in an everyday life? Well, if you get back in time to the prehistoric ages you will quickly realize that anxiety forms a big part of our protection mechanism.
Whenever you are faced with life-threatening conditions anxiety causes the fight/flight response to be activated and leads to immediate action on your part.
This is when some of the symptoms of panic anxiety attacks appear. However, before we discuss these, let me explain the role of your nervous system in the whole process.
Two crucial parts of the nervous system and their function
Your nervous system is divided into multiple sections, two of them are responsible for reacting to danger – sympathetic and parasympathetic. The first one is responsible for preparing your body for the fight or flight response (causing majority of the symptoms of a panic attack to appear) while the latter one serves as the restoring system that helps your body get back to the state of equilibrium. Whenever any of these systems is activated the whole body becomes affected.
Sympathetic system’s response causes adrenal glands to produce adrenaline and release it to the blood. This hormone serves as a chemical messenger that helps in keeping the body in the alarmed state for a short period of time.
As soon as the mind decides that the threat is gone, the parasympathetic part of the nervous system kicks in and restores the inner peace and calm. This is the feeling we all love and wait for as it signals the end of those terryfing symptoms of panic and anxiety attacks.
If you want to stop having panic attacks you need to learn how to switch the parasympathetic system on whenever you feel is necessary. This can be done with the use of special exercises that were designed to end panic attacks problem.
Your body will never do anything that could threaten your life
The interesting thing about the parasympathetic system is the fact that no matter what you do it will start working sooner or later. Your body cannot stay in the aroused state forever and needs to get some rest after it’s been mobilized to take action.
What is crucial to understand here is that the primary goal of your body is to stay alive, and because of that dying from a panic attack is impossible. You may be feeling like the world is coming to an end, like there is no hope and you’ll either loose control or have a heart attack but trust me – none of these things will happen? Why? Because your body always strives for homeostasis and would never do anything that would threaten it’s life.
However, because your mind is prone to suggestions and loves to use its rich imagination, it often misinterprets the signals send by the body. It exaggerates the sensations and quickly comes to a conclusion that there is a real threat somewhere near (even thought that’s not true). The sympathetic system becomes activated and the body gets ready to action.
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