Have you ever had a panic attack? If you have, you know that they feel absolutely awful. At their worst, they can actually feel like they’re going to take your life. And in fact, that can actually happen — but before you panic, let’s take a deep breath. In general, panic attacks are absolutely harmless, and they come because they are triggered by stress, resolving on their own. Medical experts, however, no longer think that they are harmless if you experience them very frequently. Why do they happen? We’ll talk about the symptoms in a minute, but first, let’s talk about what causes them. Panic attacks are not the result of any disease, but instead are the result of an overblown response to fear and stress.
With extremely stressful situations, normal responses are to fight or flee. This fight or flight response is absolutely normal under truly life-threatening situations. However, panic attacks happen when this fight or flight response is overblown physically so that the body is suddenly flooded with adrenaline and epinephrine, which causes the body to respond to the stress as though the person were experiencing an extremely dangerous situation. For those who suffer from panic attacks, experiences can last anywhere from 15 seconds to 30 minutes. Women are more likely to suffer from panic attacks than men are.
What makes panic attacks so disabling is that they are unpredictable, so that they can be experienced anywhere, anytime. People who suffer from them never know when they’re going to experience one. When a panic attack begins, there first may be mounting fear, followed by several symptoms. Panic attacks can occur in stressful situations for anyone occasionally, but if you experience frequent panic attacks, you have panic disorder.
Panic disorder earned from but relevant to the condition of panic attacks. You experience the same symptoms, which can be very immobilizing. You may have, for example, feelings of terror or dread, racing heart, shortness of breath, excessive sweating, dizziness, nausea, shakiness or trembling, abdominal upset, numbness or tingling sensations, choking sensations, and a feeling that you might die or at least lose control.
What causes panic attacks? The mind and the body react to intense fear. In the physical sense, it is traced to genetic malfunction. You can have panic disorder if a family member experienced depression or had episodes of panic attacks. However, medical science cannot pinpoint the exact causes of panic attacks because not all causes are known but the following have been known to cause the onset of these disabling attacks: genetics, stress, and medication.
Stress can trigger a panic attack. For example, if a loved one very close to you has recently died and you are dealing with separation or grief, the anxiety brought upon by these very stressful situations can make you vulnerable to panic attacks. You may not know you’re having a panic attack when the fear first escalates to the level that you feel like you’re going to lose control. A hallmark of panic attacks is that the body reacts to the fear as though there is a very dangerous situation at hand, when in fact there is not.
Most panic attack cases have both the mind and body reacting to fear. For example, if you experience severe depression or emotional stress, your body can have panic attack reactions, which exacerbates the mental fear, which further exacerbates physical symptoms, and so on. As you can see, it’s a vicious cycle. And unfortunately, even thinking of having a panic attack in very severe situations can actually cause one. The mind first registers the fear, which causes the body to respond.
If you have had panic attack symptoms very frequently, see a doctor. First of all, you should rule out any physical disorders that could be actually causing the panic attacks. If none are found, medications can help control the panic attacks, and you may also seek counseling and therapy. These sessions can help you understand your fears, while a trained therapist can also expose you to them so that you must face them and ultimately get them back under control.