Your panic attacks: Trigger or no trigger?

[guitarpants]

I am curious to know how many of you have had panic attacks "come out of the blue" or while sleeping, with no apparent trigger (This is how all of mine were). And how many of you had a specific trigger, place, event, situation, or thought that brought it on. I think you can almost separate them into two types of panic disorder, and treatment may even be slightly different for each.

[mumble]

Mine is a mixture of both. But more often than not there's a trigger, can be minimal or large.

[teez]

mines more emotion,,if i feel emotional about anything good or bad ,,then i expect to be in for a very bumpy ride,,

[Chloey]

I have some out of the blue. However, I have panic anytime I get really sick with the flu. My body automatically reacts to vomiting with panic attacks. I have also noticed if I am extremely stressed with work and if I don't get enough sleep I am more apt to have them. Now I have panic whenever I go out of town overnite. I have become more isolated due to the fear of getting sick from others (especially when H1N1 was a big fear and I couldn't get any doctor to give me a shot for a long time) and from having panic if I leave town. When I have a full blown attack I have all the symtoms you all have mentioned, I also feel totally paralized with full blown attacks. I had gone 3 months with out a major attack and then 2 nights ago had a major one and mine are not short, that one lasted 3 hours, until I finally crashed for the night. That attack is what brought me to this site. Thanks for letting me share.

[sarah jayne]

Mine is both. Sometimes i can be in a stressful situation which starts one off and other times i can be sat down relaxing and i get one all of a sudden :(
Sarah x

[Dahlia]

My understanding from my CBT therapist is that panic attacks do come out of the blue. The mind then wants to rationalise the chaos, so if, for example, you had your first panic attack in a cinema, you might then rationalise that it was being in the cinema that caused it. Then you have a trigger: cinemas make you panic.

[Brunette]

Panic attacks ALWAYS have a trigger but often it the subconscious mind that detects the perceived threat, even though our conscious mind might not have a clue that anything is "wrong".