Question..

[belle]

What do you do when your head and body are not in sync?

Rationally with my head i KNOW going out isn't scary and i KNOW nothing bad will happen, so why does my body tell me something completely different? Surely what's going on inside our brain should override anything else that is going on, after all - it is a brain! I can go out feeling a-okay, but then...wham - body has a fit, its reacting to the fictional, non-existant scariness.
How do you get the bodily reactions (to which we have NO control over, so no pressure..), behave in the same way as our sensible head thinks.

Love to know what your views.

x

[claire m]

hi belle my natural reaction is to get up and go when i feel it coming on i get hot and lightheaded. I just dont want to be in whatever place at whatever time.
I just want total isolation . Its not always possible to do that and i feel as if my legs are going to give way. but they never have.
Instead of wanting to run away i try to distract myself with something.

[chbun]

I'd like to know the answer to this one to. I think that my brain does not believe 100% that nothing bad will happen. For me the bad thing is the feeling of panic. I know that it is harmless but I really hate the feeling itself. I don't believe anthing bad will happen - I just believe I will have a panic attack and that is bad enough!

Charlottex

[belle]

Agree with that!

[bluedaisy]

For me the bad thing is the feeling of panic. I know that it is harmless but I really hate the feeling itself. I don't believe anthing bad will happen - I just believe I will have a panic attack and that is bad enough!

I feel exactly the same!

I started CBT two years ago and my therapist brought me worksheets with case studies/examples such as:
'Karen is afraid she is dying from a heart attack when she suffers from panic, through the miracle of CBT she learns to balance her thinking and accepts that she won't have a heart attack during panic and the PAs stop'. Or something equally trite.

When what you fear is the panic attack itself, no amount of preaching that 'it's harmless' works. It may be harmless in a physiological sense but psychologically it is traumatic and can be extremely harmful to your sense of well being and ability to cope - if it wasn't we wouldn't all be suffering from severe anxiety and ongoing phobias.

Would love to know the answer to the above question too.