Curing panic attacks

[Bill]

This is just a thought that I thought worth sharing just in case.

I feel panic attacks can occur for a variety reasons and because the causes can be various, so too can the correct treatment to cure them vary too.

A few examples...

When you were young, you could have been neglected or mistreated which enforced a sense of insecurity at being left alone which in later years could cause panics. To treat this I feel counselling might be the best option.

You could feel very stressed by your home life or at work and this trapped feeling can also cause panic. I feel a psychologist might help to obtain clear objectives how to break "free".

You could have been out one day when it feels out of the blue, a panic attack strikes which scares you so much that you retreat indoors. I feel CBT would help to rebuild the lost confidence.

A sudden trauma could also trigger attacks to occur so the right therapy would need be given depending on the trauma involved.

You could be a general worrier so that different issues such as health anxieties could trigger an attack. This could mean a therapist or counselling might help most.



In all cases the mental health team would decide which is the most suitable form of treatment but what I'm trying to say is that panics are always due to an underlying cause and it's that underlying cause that needs to be identified so that the "right" treatment can be given otherwise the treatment could be ineffective and miss the target.

The other part to remember, is that therapy Only works when the patient feels able to receive the treatment and to follow what they are instructed to do otherwise our barriers of fear can prevent us from being cured.:hugs:

[feels_like_home]

Hi Bill,
I often try to cure the symptoms, but you are right I need to look at the cause.
Thanks for the post.
Michelle

[Bill]

When we feel so panicky and anxious, we just want those feelings to stop so we look to treatments such as medication to cure our symptoms but although these treatments can help to ease our symptoms, until we tackle the actual causes, those symptoms will keep re-surfacing especially in certain situations that produce our fear.

For instance, if someone has a spider phobia, every time they see a spider they'll go into panic. The feelings are so bad that they turn to medication in the hope of stopping the feelings but meanwhile that spider is still there looking at them scaring them rigid.

So the only real effective way to stop the anxious feelings is by learning to no longer be afraid of the spider. And of course, just like fear itself, the spider too can't actually cause any harm....in this country anyway! It's just a case of proving to ourselves we actually have nothing to fear in "feeling fear" and then we become no longer afraid.

As you say Michelle, identifying the cause is the first step to recovery. The next is tackling those issues causing the fear which then leads to a more relaxed content life. You're on the right track.:hugs:

[milly jones]

been talking about ur wisdom in chat room bill. thanks for all ur forum posts i find them really useful

milly

[Bill]

Thank you Milly:hugs: I'm glad I've been of help. I'm always happy to offer my thoughts to anyone who thinks I may be able to help. I'll always "try" my best.:hugs:

[thevoicewithinme]

I agree that we have to find what's causing the panic attacks, and in my case I can think of a fair few events that have happened over the last year or so, but also at the same time..I have had some very good things happen to me over that period of time too, so why should the bad take over?

My other big problem is 0 lack of self confidence and 0 lack of self esteem. How do I boost them up when inside I hate myself so much?

[PUGLETMUM]

:hugs: hi thevoicewithinme, this was the major reason i couldnt get better - i felt soooo bad about myself it made life very very difficult and recovery almost impossible, and i beleive through personal experience and wha tive read that for alot of ppl it may be the reason they continue to suffer?

if you feel so bad about yourself you dont feel worth the effort, its like you accept the worse situation in life because you arent worth any better? well this is how i felt, what was the point of getting better when each little step never made me feel any better about myself - i made progress and then undid it all by telling myself almost continuously how much of a loser i was how id never acheive anything, how i was doomed to be miserable and isolated all my life, how i didnt deserve to be with other ppl and that everyone was better than me, even ppl who clearly had less ability at certain things!! if they had confidence in themselves then they were better than me!:wacko: :lac: :weep:

so eventually with the help of a very understanding, supportive therapist i came to see myself in a more balanced way. how had i developed this totally one sided, black and white vision of myself? which is why other ppl are always surprised when others say how bad they feel about themselves - other ppl dont see us how we see ourselves? alot of ppl on here will say that everybody thinks they are really confident and if they find out they are struggling other ppl can never seem to see a reason for feeling so bad about yourself? so i think its just this negative drip drip of self talk that eats away at the 'real' you, its totally unbalanced. nobody is perfect and we are all capable of being bad as well as good, so nobody is bette or worse than anyone, i feel this very strongly because otherwise we are frightened of other ppl and we are thinking all the time they are better than us. what have you dont exactly to feel soooo bad about yourself? have you hurt anyone, do you do bad things? well the answer will be no, although ofcourse like i said we are all capable of negative behaviour, but that is not good enough reason to hate yourself. if you have been on the receiving end of negativity or if there is a lack of care and love in someones life then this can also lead to feeling of loathing and self-hate as was my case, but again this is no reason for a person to turn on themselves, but low self-esteem/image usually feeds off other pls reactions, so if your not getting much attention its easy to sastart the ball rolling of self- hate.

i think it is 100% important to deal with this issue before you start to tackle any anxiety issues, because otherwise everything you do is always not good enough. when you are taking little steps and feeling that its okay to do that and gaining confidence, i think you are on your way to seeing yourself in a more balanced light, but obviously it has to come from you. l;ike i said i had to change the way ii spoke to myself becaus ei was sabotaging any progress id made by critisizing myself and by never seeing myself in apositive light - this way of thinking is soul-destroying and needs to be stopped, it is completely out of proportion and i think its the root cause of alot of our suffering. emma:flowers:

[thevoicewithinme]

Emmas, so much of what you say makes sense. I am, always telling myself that I am no good, useless and ugly and fat. I really do have a lot of trouble seeing what other people see in me, if that makes sense.

At school, I was constantly bullied. I have ginger hair and we all know how other kids pick on 'ginger nuts' When I hit my teens I suffered with severe acne and not only got spots but also ended up with boils on my face and yet again that made me withdraw into myself because of bullies. My first husband, at first seemed fine...then over the years he was constantly putting me down, telling me how he hated the colour of my hair, how fat I was and so on and so forth...eventually I became agrophobic and spent 7 years housebound. On recovering from this, for the first time in my life my confidence grew...and I even plucked up the courage after 17 years of marriage to leave him, although oddly enough we became the very best of friends from then onwards. My next relationship over a course of 5 years resulted in two more beautiful children, but a very brief (six months) marriage and if you have read my other posts you will see why this was so and how my panic attacks, i think, have returned.

My new partner is a wonderful man, and in no way whatsoever has he ever put me down. I know he loves me to bits, but I cannot get into my thick head why?? Since living with him I have gone down nearly 4 sizes in clothes, and yet still I am constantly worried about looking fat. I am by no means the skinniest of people, I am now a size 16 to 18 in clothes, but deep down inside would love to be so much smaller, but everyone tells me I look great the way I am.

I do try telling myself that I am a good person, that I am a good mum and so on...but there is always a little voice inside of me saying....no!

[popsy]

i can relate to some of this, i know that any improvements i do make i always over shadow with the things i cant do or things that have gone wrong when ive paniced! i will try and look at the positive improvements and steps forwards i have made instead of the backwards ones today..... xxx

[PUGLETMUM]

:hugs: hi guys, when we go through shit in life we get down and we can then become negative in the way we talk to ourselves? everyone goes through shit, its a fact of life, allour stories are littered with it!

but that negativity and the negative self-talk becomes burned into your brain - it becomes habitual and it is triggered more and more often. i dont have ginger hair although i did have acne, but i did have six months off school and returend to be treated like afreak or an outcaste by some!:mad: :weep: but what i said to myself ove rthe following years was much worse than what ever anybody else said to me! but also when we become down we let others disrespect us because we have no real self-respect.

true self-esteem only comes from within, it isnt dependent on ANYBODY, because ppl can come and go. my mum died and i had no love or support, then i met my now husband who wasn ttoo keen on being with me all the time even though hed fathered my child!!! so naturally i started to feel rubbish, and even if he so much as looked at tanother woman i would die inside:lac: :weep: now i cannot beleive i ever felt like that, because over the years i have dealt with ME. i know you say that you try and tell yourself that you are okay but underneath you dont beleive it? the difference comes when you do beleive it!!!! you have to, other wise you will be walking around for the rest of your life with yourself and you will be unhappy - the single most important relationship uyou have in your own life is with yourself. but you say it doesn tfeel right even if you tell yourself you do like yourself? thats because the negative habit has taken over your brain, it now feels unnatural to be positive? my therapist said its like walking a path down in a cornfield by walking that same path everyday, when you start to walk in a different part of the field the corn idshigh and you have to tread that ddown everyday into a path? this is how you reverse thoguht processes, and you can see this way that they take time and effort - the negative thoguht comes sooooo much easier than the positive because of the low slef-image, work them both together no matter how unnatural they feel and soon you will come to see that you are as good as anyone who walks this earth and you always have been!!!:flowers:

[misterbean]

Hey Bill
Yet ANOTHER interesting thread! I have the idea that we are chewing over the same things at the moment (using our own, individual, teeth of course).
Yesterday I was reading some research being done in the US about different therapies and outcomes. Despite claims to the contrary, their findings suggest that 'sucessful' outcomes have not increased in percentage at all during the last 30 years and that their evidence pointed to the only identifiably significant factor to be, not the method, not the intervention, not the skills, but the relationship.

I italicise this because this is not new. It seems to me that each time this is found, it gets buried under a whole new bunch (that look remarkably like re-packaged old bunches) of treatments, methods, disorders and so on. The impression is that we are gradually moving towards a fuller understanding of distresses ('problems of living' as they have been called) some of which you have done a pretty fine job of listing, but such research suggests that something else is happening.

You, I and many others are choosing to use this site, and each other, to explore our pasts and presents, to question ourselves within the safety of others that we trust. This might be done here or in a formally therapeutic relationship or wherever. I suspect that the exploration and relationships with other explorers is more important than anything else.

Martin

[Bill]

I have had some very good things happen to me over that period of time too, so why should the bad take over?

Thevoicewithinme -

We have a negative mind so we focus on the bad rather than the good. We’re worriers and often pessimistic. If we changed our outlook on life, we’d focus more on the good things in life and good things would be more likely to happen. Just as we focus on panics, we often create them but if we were more positive and become unafraid of them, they stop happening.

My other big problem is 0 lack of self confidence and 0 lack of self esteem. How do I boost them up when inside I hate myself so much?

Begin by loving yourself more. Remind yourself of all the “good” in you and then your self esteem and self confidence will also be boosted.:bighug1:

Martin -

Your posts are always enjoyable to read and so thought provoking.

I always think of anxiety as the beast within us. To train it, we need to build up that relationship with it so that we can understand it. Once we learn where it comes from, how it thinks and why it behaves in the manner that it does, we can then learn to become its master.:winks:

[jodie]

wow bill what a good post

you are so right i allways walk around thinking why will this panic not go! and i guess at times i know what has caused it but dont realy know were to start in dealing with it so i just go on getting these pa,s and anx ect
i guess somtimes the hard part is dealing with why we get panic ect it somtimes feels like to much to think about and a feeling of it is all to much to sort out if you know whay i mean lol

jodie xxx

[misterbean]

Oh Bill, our thoughts about anxiety are so similar and also so different. Like you, the part of me that panics, that dreads, feels like a separate part of me and I seem to have spent half a lifetime fighting with what is actually part of myself, have tried learning to love myself whilst at the same time attempting to master the parts that are (as I see them) bestial, unlovable, shameful. I have come to the conclusion that all this does is more firmly split one part of me from another and that part of me that is lovable also happens to be attached to the part I am ashamed of, my white whale if you like.
I'm left with a different question to yours - can I feel compassion for that part of me that I have fought for so long? Can the relationship I build be one of love rather than conquest?
Martin