Control Panic Attacks – 3 Useful Relaxation Tips
Anybody who has suffered from a panic attack or an anxiety disorder knows how it can make day-to-day life impossible to live. You may, or may not recognize the symptoms or the thoughts that trigger the attack, but you definitely recognize the moment when the panic attack actually strikes. That feeling of helplessness – knowing the problem, but not being able to do anything about it, makes anxiety attacks that much more difficult to get over.
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.
The Most Common Medications for Panic Attacks
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.
The Most Effective Treatment For a Panic Attack
Acceptance.
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.