“All of a sudden, my hands started shaking. Immediately afterwards, I felt my chest tighten up. I was having trouble breathing. My heart just started pounding like I was running a marathon. It was as if my body had waged a war against me. The fear that I had a heart attack with my arms numbing landed in my mind like a sledgehammer. I can’t think of anything else. It was like I was going to die at any moment, and not knowing what it was scared me even more. My face was fading and I became very alienated from the environment I was in. It was like I was placed withing a fishbowl and could still see everything going on. I rushed to the emergency room very concerned.”
If this situation sounds familiar to you, you probably had a panic attack, too. The most important step in dealing with the discomforts from panic attacks is to understand what they are and why. Eliminating the unknown factor is one of the most important steps to overcome the anxiety that causes the attack. Panic attacks occur when anxiety disorder increases enough to activate the body’s danger alarm. With the level of adrenaline (fear hormone) much higher than normal, our combat or run mechanisms come into play and work hard to keep us alive.
In the event of danger, we experience the same situation our ancestors experienced when they encountered a lion while hunting in the wild. Today it would be like when you need to escape from a car coming towards you. It is because our survival instinct depends on a primitive alarm system. Our body performs the steps it has memorizes so that we can react immediately in life-threatening situations and become ideal for both escape and fighting. In order to escape faster or fight harder, all muscles contract and we may have difficulty breathing due to the chest muscle group being effected. All other symptoms are reactions that occur to make it easier for us to get out of a dangerous situation immediately.
In this case, there are two ironies. The first is that someone who makes such an effort to survive is afraid of dying, and this is as a result of all these physical symptoms. The second is that this situation occurs in a moment that is not dangerous, matter fact all could even be calm. This primitive part of our brain can sometimes perceive situations that are emotionally painful or stressful for us as life-threatening. In this case, we can say that the body is actually healthy, but the alarm was set at the wrong time triggered by something around us.
If you’ve had a panic attack or are still coping with it, there are two things we’d like to tell you. First of all, you can’t die from a panic attack. Secondly, as terrible as this may seem, and it seems impossible to pass, there are definitive solutions to getting rid of panic attacks. The first step to recovery is to see a physician who is an expert in this field. You can have one-to-one sessions. There are also seminars that can help you get free from panic attacks. If you are a believer or willing to believe, spending time with the Word of God and feeling His love and trust will also be very useful in overcoming the anxieties that cause the attack. The most important thing is that you know that you are not alone in this situation and that it will pass. If you want to know more about panic attacks, you can listen to our podcasts on this topic.
