Panic disorder affects many people, trapping them often in a public place, where they must either conceal their fears or be the center of attention.
Symptoms of a Panic Attack:
- Dizziness, perhaps even a fainting spell.
- Trouble breathing, gasping for breath.
- Sick stomach, nausea.
- Chest pains.
- Changes in body temperature.
- Clammy skin, nervousness.
The anxiety of someone having a panic attack can be debilitating and persistent. No matter how hard you try to tell your mind there is no reason to fear, time to calm down, it is next to impossible to get rid of the debilitating physical symptoms that plague your thoughts and senses. This continues from a few minutes to ½ hour.
Imagine dealing with these panic attacks monthly, weekly, or even several times a day. If you’ve ever awakened from a bad dream with clammy skin and fearful thoughts or pictures in your mind, you may have an idea what pain would ensue suffering these attacks while trying to act normal.
Of course, if this happens to you rarely, this doesn’t mean you have panic disorder. Most people have had these times of panic at least a couple times during their lifetime.
Panic attacks can have complicated sources, so a trained health professional who has studied and worked with Panic disorder is essential to the assessment and treatment of someone with Panic Disorder. The tendency toward panic may be inherited. Perhaps your body is going through chemical changes because of the time of life you are in or because of an injury sustained.
There are many ways a person can contract a phobia, and phobias are often directly related to panic. You may have panic ‘triggers’ that come from your environment, possibly realistic fears, possibly fears exaggerated by a traumatic past event where your environment, situation, triggers the fear in a horrible form of ‘Déjà Vu’.
Panic attacks may be caused by the intense efforts of someone with an advanced case of panic disorder to regulate their own fears without the help of someone trained in panic disorders. If someone refuses to get help for fear of being found to have this disorder, panic disorder will feed on that private guilt, causing further damage.
Certain types of medicine, especially illegal drugs, can greatly multiply panic disorder and may cause it. And any severe sickness that separates a person from others and puts them into a situation they don’t want to face alone can trigger panic attacks and lead, possibly, to panic disorder.
Seeking Assistance for Panic Disorder Patients:
Whether it is a few hours a week with our trained staff as an outpatient, or six weeks in an intensified program, it is well worth it to treat panic disorder right away. Panic disorder is a very complicated mix of emotional and mental entanglements, so there is no ‘one size fits all’ program. Our health care professionals will counsel you one on one, teach you self-help techniques, and help you deal with the symptoms and causes of Panic Disorder.