Preventing Panic Attacks With A Vision Board?

Preventing panic attacks can be very tough, but there’s a great idea I came across a while back that worked for me, and I’d like to share it with you and see if your own situation can benefit too.

This idea is based on something called a “vision board.”

I first heard about vision boards from a more general “self help” guy. He was teaching this idea purely to help people set and visualise their goals in life. But when I heard him explain this idea, I knew that it might also work in preventing panic attacks, and maybe even stopping anxiety and panic disorders altogether.

So, what’s a vision board, I hear you ask!

It’s a collection of photos and/or images that represent your goals, where you’d like your life to be, and what you hope to achieve. These photos and images can either be pinned to a cork board, hung on the wall, or stuck up on your fridge door (as long as they’re somewhere you’ll see them throughout the day). If you spend a lot of time on a computer, you may even want to set these images as your desktop wallpaper!

The idea is this: you find images that remind you of and inspire you to achieve whatever goals you have in life. So if preventing panic attacks for you would mean that you can go on vacations without fear then you might have a picture of a beach, or ski slopes, or mountains - whatever your dream vacation would look like.

If preventing panic attacks would mean that you’d suddenly be free to take up a new hobby you’ve always wanted to try, put up a picture that reminds you of that hobby and how great it would be if you could take part.

You get the idea, I’m sure.

This is a cool psychological trick. Throughout the day you’ll be seeing your dreams and your goals on your vision board, and you won’t even really be aware of anything. But subconsciously you’re mind will be at work. It’ll suddenly be focusing on your dreams and your goals, instead of the worry and anxiety you’d normally be feeling.

So quickly put together your own vision board today, and place it somewhere you’ll see it throughout the day. You might be surprised at how effective this can be in preventing panic attacks.

Panic Attacks at Night - Why They Happen, How To Stop Them

Panic attacks at night are actually pretty common amongst people with panic and anxiety disorders. When I first started experiencing them many years ago, I thought I was unique, but now I know differently.

Sometimes referred to as “nocturnal panic attacks,” these night-time episodes can be truly terrifying. In many cases, you’ll be fast asleep and perfectly calm, only to awaken all of a sudden and find yourself slap bang in the middle of a huge panic attack.

Or on other occasions, you may be lying awake for an extended period of time, and slowly feel your anxiety levels increase until a full-blown attack develops.

In my own case, I experienced both types of these panic attacks at night.

I tried many different approaches to stopping them, mostly unsuccessful approaches, but finally I stumbled onto some ideas that worked. The first one is to simply address the root-cause of the anxiety, whatever that may be for you. The night-time attacks are just the symptom, so we have to go after the root-cause.

So that approach needs some time and some effort on your part, in order for you to investigate your own situation and find what’s really causing your panic and anxiety.

But the good news is, there’s also something you can start doing right now.

And that’s to eliminate anything stimulating for an hour or two before bed. So no TV, no Internet, no books (unless it’s very gentle subject matter), no coffee (of course!), and no stress that you can avoided.

The calmer you are when you go to bed, and the longer you’ve been calm before you go to bed, the greater your chances of avoiding these horrible panic attacks at night.

Panic Attack Drugs - The Facts

Panic attack drugs is a blanket term for all the various medications that your doctor may prescribe you if you’re experiencing severe symptoms of anxiety and panic disorders.

If you have any form of anxiety or panic disorder, then in severe cases this will lead to you suffering panic attacks. These will vary in their severity - some will be mild spells where you feel slightly on edge, with an increased heart rate and increased sweating; some will be severe, causing you extreme panic, along with symptoms such as palpitations, nausea, dizziness, depersonalization, fatigue, and headaches.

In the latter case, when the attacks have become severe, this is when your doctor may prescribe one of the many panic attack drugs.

Usually, that will mean a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). You may have heard of these, and you may associate them with depression. But these anti-depressants are also used to treat many forms of anxiety disorder.

Some of the most common SSRIs in use today, and ones that your doctor is likely to discuss with you, are:

Celexa (citalopram)
Prozac (fluoxetine)
Zoloft (sertraline)
Paxil (paroxetine)
Lexapro (escitalopram oxalate)
Luvox (fluvoxamine

If you and your doctor decide that one of these panic attack drugs is right for you, then you’ll typically start on a very low dose to reduce the risk of suffering any unpleasant side-effects.

This dose will be increased gradually over a few weeks until you are taking the full dose.

Similarly, when it’s time to stop taking your medication (usually anywhere between 6 and 12 months), you will gradually reduce your dose over a period of many weeks, reducing the risk of experiencing any withdrawal symptoms.

Panic attack drugs work for around 1 in every 3 people who try them, and it’s important to remember that when you go down this road.

Panic Attack Relief That Works

If you have any form of panic or anxiety disorder, then you’ll probably know how hard it can be to find panic attack relief.

And the reason it can be so difficult is because by the time the attack strikes you’ll be in no condition to decide what to do to stop the attack, or to lessen its impact. If you have this kind of attack frequently, then you’ll know how they scramble your mind, disorientating you, making it very hard to think clearly.

So by the time you’re actually having the attack, coming up with a plan to stop it will be close to impossible.

The answer? Decide your plan ahead of time, when you’re not having an attack.

If you decide on the steps that you’ll take right now, when you’re calm and can think clearly, it will be much easier to recall that information during an attack than it will be to invent it on the spot.

So first, ask yourself this: In general, what calms you, what relaxes you?

Because whatever calms you and relaxes you in general will also work best when you’re having a panic attack. We’re all different, so finding out what works best for you is the key to being able to find panic attack relief.

You may find that music works well for you. Or perhaps doing something physical will be a better option. How about talking to a friend or family member? If that’s something that normally relaxes you then it might be a good choice to employ when your anxiety strikes.

The key here is not so much what you decide to do when you’re looking for panic attack relief. The key is that you have a plan in place, ready for when the attack strikes. This will make it much easier for you to find relief when you need it the most.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Cure - Find It By Learning The Facts

Finding an obsessive compulsive disorder cure is often much easier if you first make yourself familiar with the of the basic OCD facts. What follows are 5 facts that you should know in order to effectively begin treating your OCD.

1. Obsessive-compulsive disorder affects 1 in every 40 people. That represents about 2.5 percent of the entire population. This is a surprisingly large number of people, but it shout be noted that of those 2.5 % of people, only a few will have OCD to a level that affects the quality of their lives.

2. The vast majority of people are aged between 19 and 25 at the time they’re diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, although some people and their doctors fail to recognize the symptoms as OCD, and so they’re often misdiagnosed until their 30s or 40s.

3. Did you know that the average person will live with their OCD for 17 years before they seek help of any kind? That’s a staggering statistic, especially when you consider OCD’s degenerative qualities, and how the condition worsens over time. The earlier action is taken the easier recovery will be.

4. There are many doctors and psychologists who are still not well-informed with OCD, its symptoms, signs, and treatments. This can lead to years of misdiagnosis and unnecessary suffering. To prevent this happening, more and more people with OCD are taking the time to learn all they can about the condition, in order to reduce the risk of misdiagnosis, and to find a treatment suited to their own specific needs.

5. Despite many theories to the contrary, OCD actually effects men and women equally. In the past this statistic was often skewed due to the tendency for less men to seek help or advice for a problem like OCD. But the stigma that once prevented men from seeking help has long since faded, and OCD is now considered by the population at large as a legitimate and treatable form of anxiety disorder.

Learning some simple facts about OCD is a great start to finding your own path to recovery. People with OCD who learn all they can about their condition typically experience a much quicker recovery, and less chance of relapsing. This is an ideal way to begin looking for your own obsessive compulsive disorder cure.

Health Anxiety Symptoms - Can A Paper Bag Stop Them?

If you currently experience any unpleasant health anxiety symptoms, you could benefit from using a simple tip that’s recently been discovered, and which is proving highly beneficial to health anxiety sufferers.

It’s based on the very old (and very well-known) trick of breathing into a paper bag to normalize your breathing during a panic attack, or when you’re hyperventilating.

When your breathing is too shallow, and when you hyperventilate, your body becomes over-oxygenated. This can cause many of the symptoms associated with panic attacks, and with health anxiety in particular: headaches, dizziness, numbness and tingling in the hands and feet, and many more.

Breathing into a paper bag during a panic attack, or when you’re hyperventilating, helps to fight off these symptoms by correcting the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide. By breathing in your own carbon dioxide from inside the paper bag you remove the excess oxygen from your body.

This trick can produce good results for anxiety suffers while they’re experiencing an attack.

But there’s a slightly different way to apply this paper bag idea, and it can produce incredible results in combating the undesirable physical symptoms associated with health anxiety, and with all forms of panic disorder.

It’s the same concept, applied very differently.

Instead of breathing into a paper bag during an attack, or while you’re hyperventilating, you do it a handful of times a day when you’re not having an attack, and when you’re not hyperventilating.

This is a completely different approach to using the paper bag trick. It goes from being “cure” to being “prevention.”

And prevention has to be better than cure, because it means the attack never has to come.

And here’s why this idea can work so well: people who suffer with extreme anxiety are almost always in a state of over-oxygenation. This is because anxiety sufferers’ breathing is always too shallow, which means the oxygen/carbon dioxide levels are never correctly balanced.

If an anxiety sufferer breathes into a paper bag for 30 or 40 seconds, 4 or 5 times throughout the day, their oxygen/carbon dioxide levels will be more balanced than they have ever been before.

The first benefit of this will be far fewer panic attacks, simply because the breathing will be under control, and the oxygen/carbon dioxide levels will be balanced.

But it’s the second benefit that can really make the difference.

Many of the physical and mental sensations experienced as a result of health anxiety are caused because of extremely shallow breathing. These same problems are present in almost all forms of panic and anxiety disorder, and it all comes down to the body being over-oxygenated.

And using the paper bag trick in this new way can go a long way to preventing this physical state from happening, which in turn can cause a massive reduction in the mental and physical symptoms experienced by those with extreme anxiety.

So take 30 or 40 seconds a few times a day to breathe into a paper bag, get that oxygen/carbon dioxide balance back to normal, and see the difference it can make in reducing or even eliminating your health anxiety symptoms, and the symptoms experienced with all forms of anxiety and panic disorder.

What Are Panic Attacks?

If you’ve been asking the question “What are panic attacks?” lately, the following should be the answer you’ve been looking for.

A panic attack is a sudden and intense period of time when you experience extreme fear, anxiety, nausea, and a general sense of “impending doom.” Sometimes a panic attack may be justified and be a reaction to a genuinely terrifying situation such as being involved in an accident, being in immediate physical danger, or facing a traumatising event.

However, panic attacks can also occur spontaneously, as is the case if you have panic disorder. Someone with panic disorder (or most other forms of the many anxiety disorders), may be relaxed and fine at one moment and then suddenly be struck down with an intense and uncontrollable panic attack.

In some cases these attacks will have no obvious cause, while at other times they may be caused by things that would cause minor worry to someone without panic disorder, but that cause severe worry and even panic attacks in those with anxiety disorders.

Another reason why some people ask the question “What are panic attacks?” is a desire to understand exactly what happens to someone who is having an attack.

Well, the obvious physical symptoms when an attack strikes is an increased heart rate, sweating, dizziness, rapid breathing, disorientation, depersonalization, stomach pains, intense fear (although the person experiencing the attack will sometimes not know exactly what they fear), and an overwhelming feeling of impending doom (essentially a feeling that something unimaginably terrible is about to happen).

So, what are panic attacks? Well, they will be slightly different for everyone who experiences them, but the above is a general overview of the typical things most people with severe anxiety will experience when they’re having an attack.

Panic Attack Stories - Do They Help, Or Hinder?

We’ve all heard of terrible panic attack stories - maybe you regularly read posts on an anxiety forum, or perhaps you read books by people who have (or once had) problems with severe anxiety. And if you do either of those things, then you’ll be no stranger to these panic attack stories.

But here’s the question - is hearing this kind of story from other people with anxiety-related problems a good thing, or a bad thing?

Well, in my opinion, it can be a very good thing. And the reasons for this are pretty simple.

First of all, hearing these panic attack stories reminds us that we’re not going through these problems alone. Because even though there are millions of people out there with anxiety and panic disorders, it can be a very lonely condition to live with. Knowing that there are others, just like us, who are living with this everyday can be very reassuring and very beneficial.

And second of all, hearing these panic attack stories can be very educational. And what I specifically mean by that is that we can learn new coping techniques by hearing how others cope and deal with their own situations. When we hear these stories, we can cherry-pick the very best ideas we come across and put them into practice in our own lives.

What this effectively does is give us the combined coping methods and tricks of hundreds or maybe even thousands of people who live with anxiety and panic every day of their lives. And this simply has to be good for us.

So in my opinion, hearing other people’s panic attack stories can do us a lot of good - take what you learn from them, and apply it to your own life, starting today.

Panic Attacks Self Help

So, what exactly is panic attack self help?

Simply put, it is the approach taken by some people with panic and anxiety disorders to find relief or recovery from their conditions using non-traditional approaches, and ones that they can implement single-handedly without outside assistance.

The person making use of panic attack self help will typically have exhausted traditional approaches with little or no success. Things such as medication-based therapy (with drugs such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or sedatives), or psychiatry- and psychology-based therapy, will have provided no real improvement in their day to day lives, and in many cases this leads the sufferer to hunt for their own solutions or alternative therapies.

If you fall into this category of people who’ve had no success with more traditional approaches, or if you simply want to bypass those other approaches and jump right into panic attack self help therapies, what is your next step?

Well, first you need to look at the potential options open to you.

These may include reading books on anxiety written by fellow sufferers and recently-recovered former sufferers, relaxation techniques with the use of things such as mindfulness meditation, breathing exercises, or yoga, and joining support groups and communities in the real world or online.

The key to panic attack self help being effective is to stay focused on how each new thing you try affects your mood, your general anxiety levels, and your anxiety-related symptoms. When you try something that improves your quality of life, make that new thing a priority in your life and see how far you can go with it.

When you try something that has no effect (or has a negative effect), move onto something else and then re-evaluate.

This changing and monitoring is the key to success with panic attack self help, and when done correctly can produce incredible results.

Nocturnal Panic Attacks - What You Need To Know

Many people who have an anxiety or panic disorder will experience panic attacks late at night, or during the night. These are known as nocturnal panic attacks, and they can be even more terrifying than the standard daytime ones.

It’s not clear why these nocturnal panic attacks occur, or specifically what causes them. They are not caused, for example, by nightmares, despite many people attributing them to bad dreams. They are also not caused by eating certain types of food close to the time you go to bed.

The only thing that seems to be clear is that you are more likely to experience nocturnal panic attacks at times when your day to day anxiety is severe, or when you’re going through an unusually bad spell.

If this kind of late-night or middle-of-the-night attack is caused by things outside our control, then out only effective approach to dealing with them is to learn ways to cope with them when they occur, and also to eliminate as much of our day to day anxiety as possible to reduce the chance of them striking us.

So if you having nocturnal panic attacks, the best thing to do is to get out of bed as soon as they strike - don’t like there and try to wait it out. This will only give you time to think and focus on the way you feel, and the attack will last longer than it needs to.

Get up out of bed and do something physical - take out the garbage, stroll around your garden or backyard. Anything that gets you moving and distracted.

If the attack is too severe for these distractions to be possible then put some music on and talk to yourself out loud, reassuring yourself. This may sound silly, and you may feel stupid as you’re doing it, but it can be very effective.

Nocturnal panic attacks can be terrifying, but it’s possible to learn ways to calm them when they happen, as I’ve described here. And if you can find ways to relax during the day, and specifically before going to bed, they will be considerably less likely to occur.

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