Anxiety is a universal emotion. It is normal for people to experience it from time to time for any number of reasons. As an evolutionary response to stress, anxiety helps us to cope better with unforeseen and unpleasant situations by helping us to focus better on the current situation at hand.

Sometimes, however, this anxiety/panic can manifest itself in the form of recurring anxiety and panic attacks that can make normal life difficult. In such a case, the sufferer can be classified as a patient of an anxiety or panic disorder. Unlike mild anxiety which many witness as a response to a stressful event, an anxiety disorder can last for months to years and usually has no apparent, logical cause.

Since an anxiety disorder is a mental condition, the best way to treat it is to understand it. Anxiety is essentially the manifestation of fear about future events, or sometimes, even the past memories. The patient often becomes paralyzed thinking about the future and experiences several uncomfortable symptoms such as difficulty in breathing, increased heart rate, a feeling of impending doom, etc.

Personally, I relied on yoga, exercise and a number of advanced techniques listed in Joe Barry’s book, Panic Away. From my own personal experience, these are the techniques I would recommend:

1. Relaxation Techniques

Relaxation is the antithesis of anxiety. A patient suffering from anxiety has difficulty putting his mind at rest and keeps worrying about one thing or the other. Common sense, therefore, dictates that relaxing your mind can be a very effective antidote to anxiety.

You should try meditating, preferably in a quiet environment. Light a few candles, put on some soft, relaxing music (nature sounds are very effective in this). Fold your legs under your hips (the meditative stance) and breathe in deeply with your eyes closed and try and focus on pleasant thoughts and memories. If possible, join a Yoga class – it’ll help you tremendously in relaxing your mind.

2. Breathing Techniques

One of the most commong physical symptom of an anxiety/panic attack is difficult, rapid breathing, called hyperventilation. Hyperventilation increases the oxygen level in the body and reduces the carbon dioxide levels, which can lead to a feeling of light headedness or even cause you to faint.

A person suffering from an anxiety condition should try and breathe through their diaphragm (this is the bony part of your chest that moves up and down as you breathe, right above the abdomen). Also, try taking in slow, deep breaths. This can help you tremendously in controlling your anxiety.

3. Adjustments in Diet

Certain diet elements, such as nicotine, alcohol, caffeine or other stimulants can cause an anxiety attack since they trigger adrenaline release in the body. Adrenaline is one of the main stress chemicals. Oily, heavy foods should also be avoided. Try eating a light, protein and carb rich diet with plenty of green vegetables and fruits.

4. Exercise

Exercise can improve your mood exponentially. Exercise helps to burn stress chemicals and eases the mind. A jog through a park or a long bike ride can be a great way to improve your mood and keep anxiety at bay. Make daily exercise a part of your routine. Not only will it help control anxiety, it will also help check your weight, giving you a better self image and more confidence.

In part two of this article, I will explore other methods to control and curb anxiety, such as cognitive therapy, behavior therapy, and medication. These are covered in detail in Joe Barry’s Panic Away – the book that helped me banish anxiety attacks forever.

1. Cognitive Therapy

3. Medication

4. Diet

5. Self-Help

If you are suffering from an anxiety disorder or have frequent panic attacks, no doubt you have been looking for a solution that is cost-effective and safe. While prescription medication might help relieve some of the symptoms, it doesn’t erase the underlying cause of anxiety. Moreover, most of the drugs are highly addictive (since they act like depressants) and have side-effects ranging from insomnia to heart problems. In fact, the fear of taking such medications is one of the biggest reason why many people refrain from seeking professional help in treating their panic attacks.

A lot of research over the years has shown that non-traditional (i.e., non-medicinal) methods to treat anxiety are as good, if not better than prescription drugs. Most doctors, even when they prescripe anti-anxiety medication, will follow it up with therapy and eventually wean the patient off the drugs.

The best way to cure anxiety disorders is cognitive behavioral therapy. This isn’t just the best treatment for anxiety/panic attacks; it is pretty much the best way to deal with the majority of psychological illnesses. If combined with the right drugs (disregarding the side-effects), cognitive-behavioral therapy is highly effective in getting a patient rid of his anxiety. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) primarily involves educating the patient about his condition, teaching him to recognize the symptoms of his illness, conditioning his mental responses to understand and eventually remove the thoughts that lead to the illness, and finally, gaining mastery over the mental processes that lead to the mental illness.

The best part about CBT is that you don’t really need a trained professional to actively guide you through the process. This is something that, with enough dedication, can be carried out by an individual on his own. The therapy itself isn’t necessarily long; in most cases, success is achieved within 3-4 months.

Best of all, the results are permanent. Unlike medication, which can result in only temporary relief, CBT gives results that will last you forever, as it essentially reprograms the way you perceive an illness like panic attacks.

Clearly, CBT is the best way to treat an anxiety or panic disorder.

However, rather than obsessing about anxiety attacks and making your life miserable, you can learn to control your anxiety disorder through a variety of techniques. Most of these techniques won’t alleviate your illness permanently, but can provide highly effective temporary relief from the symptoms. For permenent removal of the symptoms, you may want to take up cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).

1. Learn relaxation techniques. Activities such as meditation, yoga, etc. are highly effective that helping control mild anxiety attacks. If you lead a stressful lifestyle, such activities will help alleviate some of the tension and control panic attacks.

2. Massage, especially that of the region around the shoulders and neck is very effective in controling anxiety attacks. A lot of the tension is built up in the body, the most in the regions mentioned above. Gently massaging and relaxing these muscles can relieve the symptoms of a panic attack.

3. Breathing techiques – that is, deep, slow breathing – are also very effective at relaxing the mind and the body and helping you control panic attacks.

Simple tips like these can go a long way in helping you control your anxiety attacks. While they may seem trivial, the riddle to solving the anxiety puzzle is little pieces like these.

You are at my blog, reading this article, so I will presume that you or some loved one suffers from a panic disorder, or you are just researching on this topic.

A panic disorder usually manifests itself in the form of a panic attack. An attack commonly lasts for a few minutes to half an hour at most, and the victim usually experiences a feeling of dying or losing control, shortness of breath, nausea, increased heart rate, and a feeling of being trapped and hopelessness (see Sypmtoms of Panic Attack).

A panic disorder can be treated either through medication or through psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is arguably the most effective and the safest treatment option for a panic disorder, but not everyone responds to therapy, and not everyone can afford a therapist

Therefore, more often than not, your treatment course should also include a few medications for panic attacks. These medications can help relax and calm an anxious person and remove the troubling symptoms that usually come with anxiety.

Of the commonly available medications of panic attacks, the preferred one is a drug called Benzodiazepine. This drug is in medicines like Valium, Xanax/Zanex, and Ativan. Other than Benzodiazepine, drugs like Buspirone, Gabapentin, and Beta-blockers are also used in the treatment course, either independently or along with the above mentioned medicines. Needless to say, these medications require a doctor’s prescription. One must be very careful with them as they are very powerful and have strong addictive traits, especially the Benzodiazepine based ones like Valium, Xanax/Zanex. There is a strong tendency in patients to abuse them, and therefore, one must be very careful in their use.

If you have panic attacks only on certain occasions that are few and far in between, you might want to avoid a powerful drug like Benzodiazepine. In such a case, a medicine called Seredyn is a good alternative. Seredyn has made of natural ingredients, therefore it is much harder to abuse than something like Valium. Seredyn helps relax the mind and reduce anxiety, irritability and tension.

Your anxiety medication should depend on the severeity and extent of your illness, as well as your medical history, and will be determined by your doctor. The best advice I could give you would be to take extreme care with the medication as the potential to abuse them is very high. I am personally not fond of psychotherapeutic drugs and will avoid them at what cost; I’d rather choose self help. But I will still admit that they can be very effective in managing a panic disorder, if only in the short term.

There. That is the most effective treatment for a panic attack. The biggest problem any panic attack victim (or any other mental illness, for that matter) faces is denial. Most of us don’t want to believe that we can actually suffer from a panic disorder. Blame it on society that still sees any kind of mental illness as a weakness, but most of us like to believe that we are “above” being a panic disorder patient.

Accept your condition. Acceptance is the first step to treatment. It is better to accept your flaws and deal with them than to sweep them under the carpet, live in blissful ignorance.

Assess your condition. How severe is it? How often do you get your panic attacks? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Yearly?

Try and determine the cause of your panic attack. Is it due to some phobia? Some long buried memory? Any physical or emotional trauma?

Your answers to these questions will help you determine the further steps you should take. Depending on the severeity and extent of the illness, you may require constant medications and therapy. But for most cases, even home made remedies and self help guides like Panic Away and the Linden Method will do.

Remember, that acceptance leads to assessment, which ultimately leads to diagnosis and treatment. Botch the first step, and the next three will never come.