Thursday, December 31, 2009

Anxiety and Panic Attack Remedy


A natural panic attack remedy such as meditation can work wonders with continual practice. Relaxation is often overlooked when dealing with stress and anxiety related health problems. People generally ignore signs of too much stress until it becomes a real problem. Deep relaxation can help both those under stress and those with anxiety disorders.

People who suffer from panic attacks might experience frequent irritability and thoughts of dread. Muscle tension, headaches and bowel problems are highly common symptoms for those with anxiety disorders. Sufferers generally have a higher sensitivity to stress and find that their fight or flight response triggers easily. This stress response is what anxiety sufferers experience as an anxiety attack.

Since stress can aggravate anxiety as well as other health problems such as insomnia and depression, it's important to de-stress regularly. Most people spend very little time in relaxed states and are constantly stimulated externally or with internal thoughts. Even watching TV or using the computer can be highly stimulating for the mind. People might see these as relaxing activities but often they're not. When people surf the Net, they're bombarded with images, sounds, text and video.

Spending prolonged periods in focused states consumes depleted energy and can be highly stressful. When the brain becomes stimulated in this was it affects the body. Stress hormones and adrenaline are released into the body which causes unwanted physical symptoms. Meditation and deep relaxation can help control stress and work as a panic attack remedy for sufferers of anxiety disorders.

Through meditation a panic attack sufferer can learn to cultivate deep relaxation and control breathing during attacks. Hyperventilation can often occur with attacks, which are extremely frightening. Being in control of your breath when having an episode can greatly reduce symptoms. To meditate is very simple since it requires no use of tools.

It's preferable to find a quiet place to sit down and meditate, but it's not completely necessary. Ensure that you are sitting upright but don't tense your muscles. Relax your muscles in your face and in your shoulders. Close your eyes and breathe deeply, keeping a steady but slow breath. If you find it difficult to release thoughts, just keep focusing on each breath. It can be difficult to clear the mind of thoughts. But rather than try and clear your thoughts, try to watch them instead.

Visualization in meditation can also be used. For example, visualize positive energy entering on each inhale and negative energy leaving on every exhale. Do this for a minimum of ten minutes everyday. Next time you have a panic attack focus on slow deep breathing rather than try to fight it. This simple panic attack remedy can be used anytime and anywhere to help you counter anxiety and stress.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Stop Panic Attacks - The Best Way


There are millions of people who want to stop panic attacks and, like I did for years, they are probably searching in the wrong places.

Panic attacks are anxiety born. Anxiety is fear. Lots of different kinds of fears. A typical anxiety is of the kind where the person worries that they might lose their job. Or they may be worrying that they might lose their wife. Or their health.

The way I see it, it is almost always associated with the fear of loss. The original, primal anxiety was "How am I going to get something to eat today." It was literally "How am I going to survive today"? Fear of loss of life.

As we evolved, new anxieties came up like "How am I going to find a mate, raise a family, and support them"? Then, once you have these things in place, people face the anxiety born of the fear of losing these things. Still, panic attacks are quite another thing entirely. They are pure fear.

The sufferer becomes afraid of the attacks because the symptoms are terrifying. It gets a little bit "chicken first or egg first" on examination but the primary truth is that the attacks are caused by the fear of the attacks themselves. Even though it may seem like another fear triggers the attack that isn't what carries the attack through. While it may seem like going to that business meeting will trigger an attack, what fuels the ongoing, hyper-anxiety, fear based scene is the fear of the attacks.

First there are the symptoms. That alone would frighten anyone. Your heart pounds. Your face turns red. You start to sweat. You have trouble breathing!

And then there is the crazy dog fight of thoughts spinning around in your head. You fear you are going crazy. You worry that others will think you are strange. What's worse is, you are probably right about that! No wonder the sufferers want to stop panic attacks. It sure seems like it's going to kill them and it definitely makes a mess of normal living.

My ongoing Waterloo was business meetings. They were a mess for me. Luckily, I worked my way through it, mostly out of necessity. These meeting were VERY important to me, and before I started having these attacks I got a lot of help and money from the meetings. After struggling with the panic attacks in the meetings for years I came to a conclusion about the nature of these things.

I understood that, while the attacks were very difficult and truly ugly, they didn't hurt me, other than monetarily and a little bruised ego. Coupled with anger over the mess these things made in my life and the thought that they couldn't hurt me, I changed the way I saw these attacks and I became unafraid of them. At the next meeting, as I was headed into the room I felt the beginning fears of the attack.

Speaking to myself, and to the attack, which I had come to personify as an "evil entity" I said, "I don't care what you do, you can't hurt me." Right as I said it I felt the grip of that nascent attack loosen and slip away. I now had a cure, and, for me, the cure was learning not to fear the attacks.

I think it would work for anyone who wanted to stop panic attacks.