One of the most frightening things about panic attacks is the suddenness and speed with which they come upon you. And because you feel so powerless to do anything about.

One thing to remember is that when someone is suffering from a panic attack they are feeling extremely anxious about something.  And those feelings are exacerbated because many times the symptoms of a panic attack mimic quite severe health problems – the most commonly mentioned one being that of a heart attack.

It is not uncommon for people undergoing a panic attack to think that they are actually dying. And while people do not typically died from panic attacks the symptoms are still very severe.

Unless you’ve experienced a panic attack it can be difficult to understand exactly how terrifying they can be. Imagine if you will being overcome by a deep fear or dread that is so intense you can feel it within your body. You can feel your heart pounding and racing, your chest hurts, you can’t breathe properly. You feel sick, dizzy and lightheaded all at the same time. You can feel like your body is switching from being too hot to cold in instant and you can’t feel if your too hot to cold because your hands are tingling and your fingers are numb.

All the while this is going on in your body your mind could be playing tricks on you as well – thinking, in one second that everything going on around you seems like a dream and in the next it’s become a nightmare and you need to escape — but how can you escape from yourself? Not only are you fearful of your physical well-being but you also terrified of losing control — and maybe even dying.

And lastly in the lucid moments in between all of these things going on you have the fear of doing something embarrassing in front of the people around you.

The thing is that many people think that once you’ve had a panic attack its over. That’s actually quite far from the truth because between panic attacks most panic attack sufferers are haunted by the fear of having another one.

The thing is, that once they’ve had an attack in one place there is a tendency for sufferers to unconsciously blamed the place for the attack which means that people will start to avoid certain places and certain situations if an attack has occurred in such a place or circumstance before.

And it’s not unknown for panic attack sufferers to develop phobias about these type of situations.

Panic attacks differ from other types of anxiety simply because they happened so suddenly and without obvious provocation. It is tempting to say that they are unexpected but when you consider many panic attack sufferers spend a lot of their time waiting for the next one – that may not necessarily be true.

What is true though, is that most people who have had one panic attack are very likely to have another one.

For many people panic attacks are not the real problem as they are more of an outward show at the extreme end of a whole range of symptoms indicating an underlying anxiety disorder.

By now you may have realised that a panic disorder can have a very serious impact on an individual’s daily life – unless that person undergoes effective treatment.

Worldwide panic attacks are a serious health problem. To give you an example something like 3 million — that’s near enough 2% of American adults suffer from it at some point in their lives. The age at which we are most susceptible to panic attacks is in the late teens — around about 15 to 19 years of age. The statistics can be mirrored in most modern Western countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and more.

Panic attacks can also take place while we sleep. These are known as nocturnal panic attacks and fortunately occur far less often than panic attacks during the day. That said, around about 55% of daytime panic attack sufferers will also suffer from nocturnal panic attacks.

Nocturnal panic attacks tend to cause sufferers to wake up suddenly from sleep in a state of anxiety – although for no apparent cause. They may also bring with them all the other symptoms of a panic attack such as the heart palpitations and more.

Thankfully, nocturnal panic attacks tend to be short in duration normally lasting only around 10 minutes. However, the time it takes to calm down afterwards and then get back to sleep again can be much longer.

Obviously, nocturnal panic attacks will drastically affect the quality and quantity of sleep that the sufferer gets and that will have an impact on the quality of their daily life. And the ongoing tiredness will mean that they are even more susceptible to being worried and anxious therefore increasing the chances of another panic attack.

Once again though, be reminded that the symptoms of a panic attack — all the outward physical, mental and emotional signs are just that – symptoms.

Many people make the mistake of trying to treat the symptoms instead of dealing with the underlying cause.

Less experienced health providers tend to turn to drugs in order to “deal” with these outward problems but as you can imagine this only really deals with the symptoms.

More experienced health professionals, while dealing with the more intrusive symptoms, will also want to home in on the cause of the underlying reason for the anxiety that’s causing the problem. And this obviously is the most effective route to follow in getting treatment.

Some forms of therapy are better then others of course, so if you would like to be free of panic attacks by using effective drug free methods then I would suggest you get hold of PanicAway

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