Severe anxiety attacks can be devastating. Anxiety is already a daily distraction. But anxiety and panic attacks are highly disruptive, scary, and often all-consuming. Addressing panic attacks becomes a critical part of improving a person’s quality of life, yet addressing it can also be difficult, as these panic attacks often do not go away without help.
One of the reasons that anxiety attacks are so difficult to overcome on your own is that some of their symptoms *create* more panic attacks. For example, the fear of panic attacks (because of how severe they are) can cause anxiety which causes a panic attack. That’s one of many examples of the ways that anxiety attacks can be cyclical and self-sustaining.
Still, there are three very specific symptoms of panic attacks that are frequently to blame for this cycle of anxiety, because they are symptoms of panic attacks that also make current and future panic attacks worse. Our hope is that by teaching these symptoms to people, they become something that a person can more easily control, and hopefully start the process of overcoming.
Self-Fueling Symptoms of Panic Attacks
Panic attacks themselves are self-sustaining simply because they are caused by anxiety and they create anxiety. That alone is going to make them more common if left untreated, simply because being anxious of a panic attack will create the environment (anxiety) that will fuel a panic attack.
That said, there are also symptoms specifically caused by these attacks that make panic attacks worse in the moment, and create an environment where future panic attacks becomes more common. These include:
- “Difficulty Breathing” – When a person has panic attacks, they hyperventilate. When they hyperventilate, they breathe so quickly that their body has too much oxygen and is not creating enough carbon dioxide. Your body needs a small amount of carbon dioxide. This is contributes to many of a panic attack’s worst symptoms. But one of the even greater challenges of this is that a symptom of panic attacks is “difficulty breathing.” A person feels like they aren’t getting enough air, when in reality they’re getting too much air and not allowing it to convert to CO2. This causes people to try harder to breathe, leading to worse hyperventilation, and ultimately worse symptoms.
- Self-monitoring with Hypersensitization – Another strange symptom of panics is actually two symptoms that combine into one. One is called “self-monitoring.” This type of anxiety causes people to frequently scan their body for any sensation that might mean a panic attack or health issue is coming. Another symptom is “hypersensitization.” This is where everything a person feels they feel more strongly and intensely than if they didn’t have anxiety. Pain is more painful. Aches are more achy, and so on. This combination means it takes very little for a person to notice a sensation, and that triggers more, faster panic attacks.
- Stress-Related Long Term Symptoms – Another thing that is rarely talked about in the mental health world is the effect of long term stress and anxiety on a person’s body and cognitive functioning. When you read a list of panic attack symptoms, you read things like “rapid heartbeat” and “lightheadedness.” But over time, that chronic stress can lead to strange and seemingly unrelated issues, like eye pain, foot tingling, memory loss, acid reflux, and so on. All of these can trigger more, further anxiety.
It is for these reasons and more that it becomes so important to holistically stop panic attack cycles, and also talk the time to understand how this anxiety works and how it fuels itself.
Therapy for Panic Attacks
The worse a person’s anxiety attack symptoms, traditionally the harder it is to manage them in the future. That is where education comes in. By taking the time to understand what makes panic attacks worse, you can decrease their severity and, ultimately, fear them less.
During that time, partnering with a therapist can help make sure that you’re continuing to address your mental health in productive ways, and ultimately get the support you need to stop panic attacks altogether.
