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Panic Attacks

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Re: Panic Attacks

#111

Post by specialist »

vinbreau wrote: post #99
timrichard wrote: post #26

From personal experience, years ago : learning to control your breathing is the key. Your fear of the symptoms can turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you've deeply internalised the assurance that you can defeat the symptoms any time you like by regulated breathing, you might well find like I did that they just stop happening quite naturally. It takes time and practice. Sometimes now when I find myself in s…

This works unless your anxiety is being triggered by the vagus nerve in which case deep breathing only makes it worse. Had one related to an illness recently, the vagus nerve makes you feel like you are having terrible anxiety that is made worse at the apex of every in/out breath. Then when you can't breathe deeply you start having even worse anxiety. This is the problem I am dealing with atm.

I also had a mind/body anxiety snafu. I was experiencing that crushed chest anxiety sensation without any emotional triggers.

Turns out I had a pinched nerve in my spine. The pain and nerve stuff caused my body anxiety sensation, which then caused the emotional anxiety.

Resolved with a lumbar fusion.

Which explains why most of my prior efforts to mitigate weren't effective (drugs, meditation, exercise, sleep hygiene).

Re: Panic Attacks

#112

Post by pacomerh »

I had them years ago and I found Mingyur Rinpoche's lesson on YT, and listening to his lesson helped me a lot. He made me realize something key. To add to that, just the fact that he also had them made me realize I was not alone. The technique he uses to deal with this issue applied to me wonderfully. It didn't take me years, it took me days, of course everyone's case is different.

Re: Panic Attacks

#113

Post by rrmm »

nemo1618 wrote: post #73
zengid wrote: post #46

>> “I’m a type of guy who has a very long fuse,” Love says. “I try to be as non-confrontational as I can, but when that fuse breaks, I explode. This is me. I had what I feel was a panic attack / semi nervous breakdown on the last day of my internship this summer. It was basically a 12 week interview for a job. On second to last day I received a full-time job offer, and there where a few times where I had embarrassed…

Do you have chronic pain or another chronic condition? I'm trying to find out if they're common among people who are non-confrontational, perfectionists, and generally suppress their emotions.

I'd venture to guess so. Stress has a way of coming out one way or another especially for those people who are very 'distant' from their emotions and feelings. Whatever the biological mechanism (chronic cortisol, inflammatory response, muscle tension, high bp/heartrate), it eventually shows up so you can't ignore it any longer.

Part of the cure I think is figuring out what your body is telling you through emotions and then figuring out what to do with that information (dealing with the stressor or finding an outlet).

Re: Panic Attacks

#114

Post by ChuckMcM »

I remember the first time I had a panic attack it was in the middle of the night, I woke up believing there was a thought, an idea, that if I accidentally thought about it would kill me instantly. It was the weirdest thing, and scary too. Eventually, and through some great discussions with a counselor, I narrowed it down to the stress and anxiety of being a single earner, in a field (engineering) that had been known to change directions and leave everyone behind. I had lived through the semiconductor recession in the Bay Area and black Monday (1987) where the DOW jones had crashed. When the dot.com bubble burst, the fear, unspoken, was that the world would crash, I'd be out on the streets, and there would be no way for me to provide for my wife and family.

Oddly enough, a friend of mine suggested doing arithmetic in my head in a panic state, and it worked quite well for me. The theory was that you can't panic (fight or flight) reflex while your brain is in calculation mode. I don't know whether or not that is a valid theory but I do know that for me by focusing on a concrete problem (like trying to divide two 5 digit numbers) my sense of panic fades right away. In later years I found I could just read a text book, didn't really matter which one.

Re: Panic Attacks

#115

Post by rubrick85 »

timrichard wrote: post #26

From personal experience, years ago : learning to control your breathing is the key. Your fear of the symptoms can turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you've deeply internalised the assurance that you can defeat the symptoms any time you like by regulated breathing, you might well find like I did that they just stop happening quite naturally. It takes time and practice. Sometimes now when I find myself in s…

Found that to be true as well, which is the reason I got a semicolon tattooed on my forearm. The semicolon represents `Just breathe` for me. I got the idea from an instagram post I saw and after researching a bit I found Project Semicolon which is a mental health and suicide prevention project.

projectsemicolon[dot]com

Re: Panic Attacks

#116

Post by chrisfinne »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #110
chrisfinne wrote: post #90

My son was getting them for a couple years and the frequency was increasing. He was missing school. We tried all sorts of techniques that you can google. Finally took him to a clinical psychologist that focuses on them and I was embarrassed on how few sessions it took this guy to solve them.

Was it just talk therapy that solved it? Or does your son have to do ongoing treatment like meditation / prescription medication?

Just talk. Maybe 5 sessions?

It basically boiled down to (in his case) "so your heart is beating fast? that's ok. not a big deal."

It is always amazing to watch an expert in any field distill a seemingly complex problem into a simple one with a simple solution (at least in my son's case).

Obviously, his decades of expertise was able to eliminate a world of root-cause possibilities and guide the conversation to help my son believe this simple conclusion.

He'd also induce panic attacks by having him breathe through a narrow straw. Probably helped to demystify them and practice dealing with them.

Re: Panic Attacks

#117

Post by ellyagg »

timrichard wrote: post #26

From personal experience, years ago : learning to control your breathing is the key. Your fear of the symptoms can turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you've deeply internalised the assurance that you can defeat the symptoms any time you like by regulated breathing, you might well find like I did that they just stop happening quite naturally. It takes time and practice. Sometimes now when I find myself in s…

The breathing in and out by counts thing frustrated me for a long time. It didn't help calm me at all, but the advice is everywhere.

I can easily shallow breathe into my chest all day long. That doesn't fix anxiety.

You need to breathe into your belly. Watch your belly rise and fall with each breath.

It works, but in my case it only works while I'm actively focusing on breathing, which isn't super helpful. As soon as I want to start thinking about the core problem again, my autonomic systems revert to the original problematic breathing pattern.

Instead, you have to address the core problem. The only long-term solutions seem to be:

1. Rationalizing away the core problem that's making you scared. If you're anxious that you're not achieving your goal, you can decide that's not a goal anymore.

2. Solving the problem.

Neither of these solutions are paint-by-numbers. Life is hard. Solving hard problems is hard. If you're a high motivation person and you set your goals to be aspirational, you may just have to live with the discomfort of anxiety.

Re: Panic Attacks

#119

Post by amelius »

_cereal wrote: post #100
amelius wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the website: > the purchase of the book is totally optional, so please do take the time to look around my site Also, the book is only 13 pounds, so I don't they they are making a lot of money out of it. Perhaps they use the money to keep the website running?

Yes, I read that sentence before writing and your argument about the website expenses can be valid. It does not change my main point: when it is about health one should search for information from qualified professionals. For example: 1. https://www.anxiety.org/panic-disorder-panic-attacks 2. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/panic-attacks... A personal experience can be illuminating sometimes but it can…

You could be right, but on the other hand many qualified professionals prescribe Zoloft or Xanax and be done with it. A personal account (which in fact many of the comments here on HN are) can be very helpful, if only as a reference when talking to real professionals.

Re: Panic Attacks

#120

Post by watertom »

I had crippling panic attacks for almost 10 years, doctors, drugs, nothing helped, I quit one job before I got fired due to poor performance because of my panic attacks.

High doses of L-Ascorbic acid eliminated my panic attacks. I slowly worked up to 60mg per KG of bodyweight. I weighed 250 (113kg) works out to ~7 grams per day. I slowly worked up to 2g before breakfast, 3g before lunch, and 2g before dinner. Once I started taking 4g per day the attacks lessened, and when I hit 6 they went away for good.

L-Ascorbic acid is an anti-stressor hormone in animals, humans have a mutation that prevents us from making it in our livers.

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