Understanding Anxiety And Panic Attacks

Palpitations, racing heart, banging heart, sweating hands, shallow breath, churning stomachs, a choking feeling… are just some of the symptoms of severe anxiety attack or panic attack mentioned in the book “Self Help for your Nerves,” authored by Dr. Claire Weekes. Scholars and clinicians describe anxiety as “an apprehension of the future, a pre-sentiment of a something which is nothing.”

Anyone knows how to be anxious. All of us have experienced anxiety before an exam or before making a speech or other anxieties that come under the heading of “normal anxiety.” How do we know if the anxiety you are feeling is normal or abnormal? There are two criteria, according to Betty Mclellan, a practicing psychotherapist and author of the book “Overcoming Anxiety.” First, normal anxiety is said to be a specific event. Example is if you are feeling anxious before a job interview. The job interview is the specific event. Second, normal anxiety has a limited life, in that, when the event is over, so is the anxiety. Abnormal anxiety is the kind that is non-specific and that does not have a limited life. This kind of severe anxiety can be there from the moment one wakes up in the morning till she finally gets to sleep at night, with no obvious explanations.

In the final chapter of her book, McLellan outlined a treatment called Morita therapy that she finds successful in her many years of experience as a practicing psychotherapist. The treatment has some similarities with Dr. Weekes’ four simple principle in treating anxiety and panic attacks. Here’s Dr. Weekes’ summaries :

1. Facing. Whenever anxiety comes upon you, she says, you must not ran away from it but face it. “Stop regarding it as some monster trying to possess you”. Breathe slowly and deeply and go with it.

2. Accepting. Instead of fighting it, be prepared to accept it and live with it for the time being, because by so doing, you will break the fear-adrenalin-fear cycle. She says the churning in your stomach will eventually leave you if you are prepared to let the time pass and not anxiously watch the churning during it’s passing.

3. Floating. When your anxiety is high and you are paralyzed with fear, instead of forcing yourself to walk a flight of stairs, you should try to imagine you are floating. Dr. Weekes’ encouraged her patients to “Float past fear.”