Symptoms of Panic Attacks
Symptoms of Panic Attacks
For anyone who has suffered from a panic attack, the symptom or symptoms of panic attacks can be enough to create a frightening perception, or an irrational fear about a location or event and lead them to avoid these circumstances in the future. If someone suffered from a panic attack in a crowded room, often they try to avoid crowded rooms because they fear suffering another attack in the same situation. These irrational fears are common pre-symptoms of panic attacks.
People have often reported that an attack feels like a heart attack or that they are dying, though in most cases, panic attacks do not lead to death. The symptoms of panic attacks, though, are often quite intense and enough to instill this irrational fear within them.
Panic attacks can occur without warning and without any real genuine reason. The symptoms of panic attacks, such as a racing heart beat, difficulty breathing or feeling that the chest is constricting, stomach issues, dizziness, nausea, chills, sweating, or other symptoms, can vary in intensity before and during the attack. Symptoms of panic attacks reported by one individual may not be reported by another, but this doesn’t mean that one is more important than another. Each panic attack symptom is important in determining and recognizing the situation before it grows into a full-blown panic attack.
Panic attacks will generally last for several minutes and can be extremely intense and unnerving. When the symptoms imitate a heart attack, the person will feel as though they are having one or that they may die. Panic attacks can also occur at night. Forty to 70% of panic attack sufferers reporting them during the day also experience them at night. While symptoms of panic attacks are, generally, related to other anxiety disorders, they can lead to phobias and other fears about different situations that the person encounters. In the example above, a person may avoid crowded rooms due to the fear of having a repeat attack in a crowded room. Their initial attack probably had nothing to do with the crowded room, but the subsequent association with it has led to an irrational fear of them. So the next time they find themselves in a crowded room, they may begin to feel the constricting chest or rapid heart rate that will lead to a panic attack.
Developing a phobia about these situations can often lead to phobias about other situations. Panic attacks are not like any other anxiety disorder because they are often unprovoked and can be quite disabling. Sufferers will begin to avoid the situations that initially led to the attack and this, in turn, develops into a panic disorder. Without proper treatment, panic disorders can drastically affect a person’s life. Nearly 3 million adult Americans suffer from panic attacks at some time during their lives. There are a number of options available that can help them deal with the situation and control their symptoms of panic attacks. Therapy and medication are the two main avenues of treatment and will be explored more thoroughly in other articles on CureYourPanicAttack.com.
