Are you beginning to ask yourself “just what are the symptoms of a panic attack?” Is that what I have been experiencing?
Panic attacks and anxiety attacks aren’t necessarily the same thing, so technically speaking they don’t manifest in the same symptoms.
You usually find your anxiety getting out of control due to some outside stressor that has turned it on or up. Something that you can name.
But the symptoms of a panic attack come without you ever knowing what has happened. Consciously.
When you are in the middle of an anxiety attack you may have heightened feelings of fear, and apprehension. It could feel like extreme worry that something is going out of your control.
If you could figure out how to stop something from happening, the anxiety would go away.
You might feel your heart racing away, or become aware that your breath is getting short.
On the other hand, panic gone awry doesn’t usually feel like this.
The Symptoms Of A Panic Attack Are Different
A panic attack doesn’t have an identifiable aggravater. You won’t know what provoked it, and you can’t predict it’s arrival.
Symptoms of panic attacks in women and in men will strike you with fear and extreme apprehension to the point of sudden terror.
The most alarming part of these attacks on my own person was the sensation that I was in the very process of dying.
You may find yourself mentally checking your body for exactly why you are about to die, and as you do, you will be sort of agreeing with your brain that something is going on.
This agreement actually brings on more of the symptoms that can be one or many of these attacking you in the same moment:
- pounding heart beat
- sweating
- trembling
- thinking you are choking
- chest pain
- nausea
- feeling like you are loosing control of your being on earth
It doesn’t take many times of standing in these symptoms for you to begin to find yourself worrying and thinking about when the next episode of terror will come to greet you.
As you learn to anticipate the next attack, you can find yourself living a constant state of anxiety.
How Long Can Symptoms Of A Panic Attack Last?
Sometimes I would be caught up the symptoms of a full blown panic attack for an hour or more. I know now that when they first starting coming I was so terrorized that the fear was turning on more panic.
The symptoms would seem to last forever because they were actually feeding on themselves.
The more I panicked, the more my subconscious realized that it had been right after all, and sent out more of the same symptoms.
Some times they can last only a couple of minutes, and the minutes can seem so long that it feels like forever.
Some times the symptoms of a panic attack can go on all day, fear building upon fear.
What Are The First Signs Of A Panic Attack
The first signs of a panic attack varies from one person to the next, but I think most would agree that the signs don’t seem to come slow enough for you to actually predict what is happening to you.
Until you have had so many you recognize pretty quickly what is happening, or you are learning how to take control and stop them, you can just find your self suddenly consumed with the symptoms.
I thinks it’s this surprise element that makes panic attacks so forceful. When you figure out what is happening, you naturally want to figure out way to fight off the symptoms, which calls more symptoms to come. They think they are rescuing you from some attacker. They haven’t learned yet that they are the problem, the attacker.
The first signs of almost every panic attack I had was being completely overcome with a sensation that I was dying, leaving this earth for someplace else.
If chest pains would have manifested, I would have assumed I was having a heart attack. Because I could never feel any pain, I always wondered if I was having a stroke?
When all of the symptoms were gone, I would be fatigued, and looking for some sign of how I had lived through it.
What To Do During Symptoms Of A Panic Attack?
The reason these things are called panic attacks is because they overcome you with panic and it’s difficult for most people to know what to do during the onslaught of symptoms.
Until you have learned how to cure panic attacks, your natural impulse will be to mentally search for something to fight off.
What is causing this to happen to me right now, right this moment.
You find yourself being completely consumed with all of the symptoms that seem to be manifesting in your body.
Because you may feel like you are going to die, lose control, or have a stroke or heart attack the tendency is to respond with more fear and terror.
Something has to occur within your own self that allows you to stop the terror, and take a conscious look at what is really going on with you at the moment.
You have to learn ways to stay calm and fully aware during the symptoms of a panic attack.