Coping with Anxiety and Panic
Anxiety
Anxiety can present in various ways.
Some people have “general” anxiety. This is the kind of anxiety that happens often, maybe even everyday. If you have “genralized” anxiety, you probably worry a lot, find yourself over-thinking, and asking, “What if…” questions.
Another form of anxiety is social anxiety, and this presents mostly in social situations. This is an anxiety about how others perceive you. People with social anxiety may feel overwhelmed about socializing in groups or speaking up in a meeting or giving a presentation.
There are other types of anxiety, too, like phobias of specific things, like bugs or heights or crowded spaces.
Depending on what you are dealing with, we can discuss and see if this is something I can help with or if you need a referral to a therapy specific to your type of anxiety.
What is a panic attack?
If you’ve had a panic attack, you probably know it, because it is one of the most overwhelming and uncomfortable feelings… not something that would go unnoticed! There are several symptoms of panic, and when you get at least four of them at the same time, that’s a panic attack.
Here are the symptoms:
Heart palpitations
Sensation of shortness of breath
Feeling of choking
Chest pain or discomfort
Feeling dizzy, unsteady, light-headed or faint
Heat or chill sensations
Sweating
Trembling or shaking
Tingling or numbness
Nausea or abdominal distress (may present as loss of appetite)
Feelings of unreality or being detached from oneself
Fear of losing control or “going crazy”
Fear of dying
Panic attacks usually come like powerful waves, and it can take a while before they subside.
And then… you don’t know when it’s going to happen again, so there is the anticipation of the next one and wondering where you’ll be and how you’ll cope.
Some people get panic attacks at work. Some people get panic attacks in particular places, like on the basketball court or in a large lecture hall or when they go to grocery stores.
Sometimes, people start to avoid the places where they have had a panic attack, because they don’t want that experience to happen again.
If you can relate to this, you’ve come to the right place. There are ways to manage this kind of anxiety. In order to understand how to treat panic, let’s first look at why panic happens.
Why does anxiety / panic happen?
Panic attacks happen to different people for different reasons. Here are some possible reasons for panic:
Everyone has a threshold for stress.
When we have a few stressors, we can usually cope. When those stressors start to add up, and our self-care starts to decrease (getting less sleep, eating whatever is available in the moment, skipping the work out to catch up on work…) we can reach and surpass that threshold, and then our bodies get overwhelmed.
Anxiety (including Panic Attacks) can be a response to not acknowledging our full range of feelings.
We all have all kinds of feelings, but sometimes, we tell ourselves, “It’s okay to feel this, but it’s not okay to feel that.” For example, some people feel like it’s not okay to feel angry or it’s not okay to feel sad or it’s not okay to cry or it’s not okay to feel _______ (fill in the blank). You might have been taught not to question authority. Or, you might be reacting to micro-aggressions that are hard to pin-point, but you can feel them.
When we don’t allow ourselves to express our full range of emotions, we stuff down or ignore a lot of our feelings. But they are still there. They don’t just disappear. And, eventually they get expressed somehow… perhaps in ways we don’t expect and have little control over… like anxiety and/or panic.Difficult life experiences:
When we have a difficult experience, one where we might have felt unsafe, the brain does its best to protect us from having that happen again. Sometimes, the brain over-compensates. It starts to be hyper-alert to danger and warns us about little things that are not actually dangerous.
I love that the human brain wants so much to keep us safe. Sometimes, that brain needs to re-process our difficult past experience(s) so that it can re-set, so that its alert system goes back to functioning well instead of being on hyper-alert.
How does therapy help?
In therapy we explore what might be contributing to your experience of Anxiety / Panic.
Is it too many stressors all at once? Are there some feelings you tell yourself (subconsciously or consciously) are NOT okay? Do you take care of everyone else and attend to yourself last…if at all? Are there past experiences that have put your brain on hyper-alert to danger?
When we get more clarity on what is happening for you, we can work to make things better. Sometimes, talking in a space where you can be heard and understood is, in itself, very helpful. When feelings come up, counseling is a safe space for those feelings to be expressed. If there are past events that have affected your sense of safety and security, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) can help the brain to neutralize the emotions behind those experiences and re-set your brain’s alert system to function adaptively again.
