What are Anxiety Attack or Panic Attacks – Why You Get them? by Dr. Tracey Marks

3 years ago
36

I used to suffer from anxiety attacks. They were intense and they were frequent and different number of ways, they nearly ruined my life. My anxiety disorder grew steadily worse over the 16 years I suffered it. It seemed to gather strength over time... File my ability to cope with it gradually weakened. There honestly were times where I wondered where it would all eventually end.
Things are different now.
I don't suffer anxiety attack like that anymore.
I have not for nearly two years and my mental health is pretty much fully restored.
It took some time for me to finally get better.
Although, to be truthful, time was something I have plenty of.
Because 16 years of anxiety attacks and everything that's entails was not going to mind an extra few weeks of the same.
But by the time it had come to its end my anxiety had shrunk to a shadow of its former self. I don't miss it! And why would I?
Any type of anxiety disorder is just plain cruel
Anxiety kicked me around emotionally, mentally and physically.
Anxiety episodes themselves were often dreadful.
Frantic, panicky, scared...
Worrying about all sorts of small details, rumination to the point of panic...
Mentally I'd go around in circles and just think myself into to distress and powerlessness.
anxiety disturb my sleep to the point I could sometimes. Wake up more tired than I was when I had gone to bed. And inevitably, the misery of it all slipped me into occasional depression.
Mild depression is so common for people who suffer from any kind of anxiety disorder.
I simply could not recall the last time I felt relaxed or at ease.

Retraining from life
I tried so hard to avoid anxiety attacks that i retreated some situation and people that might trigger them.
The problem was that for me e there were so many possible triggers that I was in danger at times of becoming a recluse.
My anxiety disorder made it difficult for me to make - and sustain- friendships.
Career aspirations took a back-burner too.
I had to choose work ok where my bosses where completely understanding, and where me being an emotional mess all of of a sudden was not going to get me fired!
Who is does restrict your option somewhat.

Not the future I wanted
I often feared that the effect is it was having on my relationship might leave me lonely and without friends.
I did not want to be lonely....
I especially worried that my ability to work and support myself would deteriorate as the condition made my mental health slowly worsen and the physically cost - in terms of condition that come from ongoing, chronic stress- didn't bear thinking about. Because the ongoing is stress of this order is known conclusively to lead to chronic inflammation in the body. And with too much inflammation an anxiety sufferer becomes a prime candidate for inflammatory disease. which includes diabetes, fatty liver, kidney disease, arthritis, heart disease and some cancers. So, as well as a deteriorating mental health Outlook.... Physical disability was an ever-present fear.

Doubting myself
All this made me wonder about me....
What was wrong with me?
Why am I like this?
What must I look like to other people?
What would they be thinking about me?
I really did think sometime that I was just a ridiculous person.

I tried the usual remedies...
I did everything I could to deal with my anxiety. Medication made some difference. They often - although not always - took the edge off the worst anxiety attacks. I took drugs for a while during my early years of the disease. Eventually on my doctor's advice I stopped taking them.
I was glad to stop for two reasons.
First, the side effects of the meds were similar to my actual anxiety! Agitation, sleep problem, loss of memory, poor concentration, even some confusion at times.
Second was that meds don't address the actual causes of the anxiety.
They only work on symptoms, so you remain ill even when you're drugged up. The underlying cause of anxiety remain firmly in place, forever chipping away at your chances of ever having a truly happy life. I didn't like putting all those drugs into my body, and certainly didn't like the fact that those meds can become habit forming which one of the reason doctors try to get you off them as quickly as they can.

So what next?
So, like many anxiety sufferers, that lift me having to use a variety of techniques to handle my condition. Some approaches worked from time to time. Nothing was truly reliable though.
Hydraulic thought than that reversing the condition was impossible.
I was wrong.... but that was my thinking back then when I was ill. In the meaning I was pretty stuck. I had better days and I had really difficult days. I rarely had two better days together.
After years of suffering like this my anxiety disorder was making me grow tired and despondent.

Bad news...and good news
even though I wasn't sure that an anxiety disorder could be successfully treated didn't stop me from searching for some sort of miracle cure.
The bad news is that such a thing does not exist.
There are, of course, people out there who say otherwise. They promise they'll get rid of all types of anxieties using a secret potion made of some secret tree root they discovered in the forests of somewhere like Panama.
Other 'gurus' offer remedies based on all sorts of exotic rituals and exercises. A kind of faith healing, if you like.
I tried enough of them to know that none of these approaches offer single shred of improvement to an anxiety disorder.
There's good reason why these quirky, untested approaches didn't work. The people offering these 'remedies' simply didn't understand what anxiety actually is. They just didn't understand that all anxiety disorders are intricate conditions with multiple layers of complexity. There's not a single pill or an exercise a person can do that's going to make it go away just like that. To make a change to an anxiety disorder requires a deep understanding of all the strands that have tied themselves together to create that disorder in the first place.
thinking you can cure everything with a person or a yoga exercise is just plain wrong.
Still, the promises are made and people like me, desperate for some relief, fell for a few of them. But now there's some good news
Really, really good news.
If you're patient, gentle with yourself and willing to slowly work through science-based, research-backed activities than your world can change.
My world definitely did change, it's changed forever, I didn't expect it to be this good, I sometimes can hardly believe that it is!

I stumbled on all this by accident
Some years ago, I attended an anxiety support group where i used to live, we met weekly and although it didn't do much to help with my anxiety, it was comforting to not alone with the problem, it was on a visit back to that old neighbourhood that I bumped into one of the group's members.
Well...Ex-member, to be precise.
Martin had suffered from a different disorder to me, he had OCD for years and I remembered that he had a hellish time getting it under control and although i couldn't completely understand Martin's world, my anxiety was generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) with occasional panic attacks (just to make life interesting)
I do know he had struggled a lot, but while I still had very bad anxiety Martin had... nothing.
No symptoms of OCD
No stress
No depression
No nothing.
We stopped off for a coffee and he explained what had happened

The pathway out of anxiety
In a nutshell, Martin had become so despairing of his condition that he'd tried out some natural remedies. If modern medicine couldn't help him then perhaps alternative medicine could. Some of the different methods he'd tried hat reduced the intensity of his symptoms which meant that he could function better, excited by his small progress he'd gone down the alternative health rabbit hole and then resurfaced with what he called 'a miracle'. Having tried many routes Martin had found a straightforward program that gave sufferer of all types of anxiety a clear but gentle pathway out of their problem and into repaired and restored mental health

All anxiety disorders are improved
Martin told me the method he used worked on this type of anxiety disorder:
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and similar types of excessive and uncontrollable worries
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and its 4 major profiles
Panic Disorder, including agoraphobia and other intense experiences of fear or emotional discomfort
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and similar illnesses related to traumatic experiences
Social Anxiety Disorder and other debilitating social fears and anxieties
Martin explained that his condition had melted away bit by bit over time, he'd first noticed a slight lessening of the intensity of his synonyms and then a reduction in their frequency. Overtime, intensity and frequency reduced to...just about nothing.
I remember that at the time he was telling me all this, I think my mouth must have hung open, at times he laughed at my expression.
'it's true!' he insisted and i nearly believed him.
Of course, now i really believe him because I've had his experience with my own anxiety disorder.

How it works?
Martin told me he had been introduced 2nd alternative health practitioner by the name of Christian Goodman.
Christian Goodman is the creator of a very successful anxiety disorder program that is producing outstanding results for many hundreds of people, it's this program that had changed Martin's life so dramatically.
Now I'm a little sceptical about alternative cures, I do mostly trust doctors and the drugs companies not everyone does of course.
But Martin's advice to try out Christian Goodman's 'The End of Anxiety' program came at a time when I was becoming increasingly worried about both my mental and physical deterioration, I had reached a stage where I really was prepared to try anything and this seemed like a pretty good bet.

My route out of anxiety
Christian's 'The End of Anxiety' program guided me carefully through a set of activities that I could do at home whenever i felt up to it, as i worked through these activities overtime so my anxiety gently melted away until it no longer existed. The program was simple, straightforward and consisted of several types of activities:
Daily habits
Some simple daily work that takes a few minutes but which does some of the most wonderful healing I have ever experienced.
When-you-feel-like-it activities
Some thinking type exercises that helped me change my relationship with myself and my condition, these were transformative.
One-off action
Simple but important things I only had to do once but which revealed really useful insights into what i was suffering.
Self-care habits
I didn't know much about how to truly care for myself until i learnt it from Christian, in truth, i didn't realize how important it was either until i actually did it. Among all the small but memorable victories I enjoyed with his program.
I think self-care gave me the quickest release from my anxiety misery.
For More : https://bit.ly/2KKcvBa

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