Panic & Anxiety Blog

When a panic and anxiety attack settles in for the first time, there may seem to be no obvious reason behind it. It appears to come out of nowhere, out of the blue and without warning. At that very moment, you have no idea where it had come from. But the fact of the matter is that there are distinct causes of anxiety and panic attacks. More often than not, there is a connection between your life and the panic attacks that you are experiencing.

You may miss what that connection is entirely, however the connection is there. One of the reasons for missing out on the root causes of a panic attack is that the sufferer is normally looking in the wrong places. The analysis is immediate and commonly very short sighted. Usually when we experience very strong sensations we look around us to see what is causing them at that moment.

We ask ourselves:

Is something threatening me?

Am I in danger?

Did I manage to contract a dangerous illness?

Did I eat something that had triggered these sensations?

Was I poisoned?

…

Initially, sufferers of panic and anxiety rarely look further back into their lives to explain the causes of social anxiety disorder or any other kind of anxiety disorders. However, the real cause of anxiety and panic attacks go much further than the heat of the moment. The root cause of attacks and sensations like this can actually be traced back to months, even years before the first incident. Usually, the first attack is triggered by a minute experience that causes the anxiety to come bubbling back to the surface in the form of an panic attack.

But what are the possible causes of anxiety and panic attacks? And how can they be dealt with?  Read More

A bit of anxiety before a commercial flight is fairly common. Even with the tremendous amount of safety precautions on every flight; there is an inescapable tinge of anxiety when there’s a possibility that your airplane can plummet from the sky at any moment. For a good number of people however, flying anxiety is more than just a nagging worry. It can be a dreadful and paralyzing experience.

Flying has become a more common mode of travel over the past few years. The dropping prices of airline fares; and the belt-tightening of countless airlines have allowed more passengers to ferry across the skies than ever before. However, the idea of being locked in a flying metal compartment hovering tens of thousands of feet off the ground can prove to be a dramatically harrowing experience for those with flying anxiety.

A single flight can take anywhere from forty five minutes to seventeen hours at a time, which doesn’t include the time it takes to check in your luggage and wait to board. All of that time can be excruciating for anyone who has flight anxiety.

The greatest fear for those who have anxiety of flying is of course, suffering through a panic attack on a plane. The feeling of paralysis, suffocation and sheer helplessness can take a huge toll on a person who is forced to sit tight for hours at a time. Not only does this become dangerous for the passenger with flight anxiety, but this can also be a danger for those passengers around him. Panic is a sickness that spreads quickly, especially in a situation that has you flying thousands of feet above the ground.

However, there are natural, very systematic solutions to overcome flying anxiety once and for all. To help overcome flying anxiety, here are a number of tips and techniques you can follow…  Read More

Is it possible to live a full and happy life even with chronic anxiety? It’s a question that I’ve been asked about a lot, and a question I continue to try to answer.

One of the most overpowering fears when it comes to chronic anxiety syndrome is how quickly, and how easily it might change your life. It pains me to think how many times I felt my life slipping away from me because of my condition.

I would lock myself in my apartment, days at a time at worse; because I feared that I would unravel as soon as I stepped out into the open world – like a spool of thread that had slipped out of the seamstresses’ hand.

At the height of my chronic anxiety, I felt lost and out of control. My heart would palpitate seemingly out of nowhere, and I would sweat profusely, as if every single pore in my body was an open dam of water. But the manifestations of my chronic anxiety disorder were much worse mentally than they were physically.

During my many chronic panic attacks, I felt paranoid and unsure of myself. And though those feelings normally creep up on normal people; this feeling felt like an avalanche in my psyche, bull dozing through my conscious self with violent force.

Though I would eventually become determined to take control of my chronic anxiety, it would be a long time before I could come to terms with my condition. For the longest time I felt robbed of my own life. I was held hostage by anxiety; unable to tell when it would trigger next, trapped in a shell built by my own fears.

However, after a long while of therapy and support from the people around me, I discovered that living a full life with chronic anxiety wasn’t only possible, it was attainable.

What a Full Life Means Under Chronic Anxiety

When a person struggles with chronic anxiety, it’s common to want to live a life free of it. A lot of chronic anxiety sufferers strive to live the life they had before the condition. For those of us who only know a life of anxiety, we look to our friends and family as barometers for what it means to lead a “full life”. I used to think of any excuse possible to skip out on any social gathering with even a handful of strangers. But at the same time, I envied my friends who could socialize on a whim. I consider myself lucky that they’ve still considered me a friend after all these years, especially since I would be the first to admit that I probably didn’t deserve it.  Read More

I never liked driving. I never liked the idea of sitting behind the wheel for painfully long periods of time. I hate looking for parking, and I hate idling my hours away in traffic. During my younger years, I lived in the suburbs with my parents, and when they eventually allowed me to drive, I realized that the novelty wore thin after awhile.

I enjoyed the freedom, of course (as any teenager), but I also abhorred the responsibility that came with it.

I hated having to pay for gas, the need to maintain and tune up your car. And since my ride was nowhere near “current”, I found myself burning through my allowance faster than I could save it.

However, when I grew older, went to college and got my first job; driving became a necessary evil in my life. I didn’t loathe it as much as I first did, much like how you come to live with the small annoyances in your life. It’s not like driving was going to be the death of me or anything.

But when I was diagnosed with anxiety disorder, I realized that it could as well be.

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The Dangers of Driving Anxiety

Looking back at the years before being diagnosed with my condition, I realized that my driving could have easily been a hint for what was slowly invading my life. Anxiety was something of a way of describing my life, but no way did I ever think it would become an actual condition.

I remember feeling anxious every time I took the wheel. I would feel my heart begin to palpitate, though slightly at first, as soon as I heard my seatbelt lock into place. And as soon as the engine revved and the tires hit the pavement, I found myself focused on nothing else but getting to where I needed to be.  Read More

After many years of dealing with my own issues with anxiety, I’ve realized that the best way to cope with anxiety is to surround yourself with people who support your recovery. I’ve learned a lot about coping with anxiety by being with people who suffer from the same condition.

However, not all people agree with me. I’ve met specialists who believe that this practice can be detrimental to your mental health, that being surrounded by people who are just as much a victim of anxiety can lead to an overwhelming sense of despair and depression. There is some potential truth to that, however. But I firmly believe that if you surround yourself with other people who are making a conscious effort to get better, than they can only be an inspiration to you.

Although anxiety has taken a lot of things away from my life, my family and my friends; I’ve come to accept the fact that anxiety has also shaped me in a way that has only made me stronger than I ever was before. But if you had asked me years ago that I would be saying that now, I wouldn’t believe it myself.

I’ve been asked time and time again, how I’ve come to cure my anxiety: as if there was some magic pill or drug you could take to make it all go away. Unfortunately, it’s never that simple.  A cure for anxiety disorder isn’t something that happens overnight. It’s something that is worked on for months, even years, with the constant fear of relapsing.

With that in mind, is a cure for anxiety really possible? Or is coping with anxiety the most you can hope for?… Read More