Panic Attacks: Causes, Symptoms and Treatment Options

Panic attacks often come on suddenly without warning. Panic attacks are described by those who have experienced them as overwhelming terror without an apparent and immediate single cause.

Cause Of Panic Attacks

Panic attacks have been shown to be associated with a cluster of stressful and anxiety-driven events culminating in a full-blown panic attack.

This may explain why the experiencing the panic attack is unable to point to one single causal event. For the one experiencing a panic attack, the causes may come from numerous and different types of stressors.

While the exact cause of the panic disorder remains unknown, it usually occurs when a person is already going through high levels of stress and confusion, such as experiencing life-changing financial and legal trouble and the host of stressors these types of events can cause.

Panic attacks result from a combination of sustained and acute levels of fear, stress, and anxiety. Ironically, those who have experienced panic attacks claim their greatest fear is the fear of having another panic attack.

Symptoms of panic attacks

The terror in panic attacks is always associated with physical symptoms, including faint, trembling, chills, hot flashes, severe chest pain, dizziness, choking, difficulty breathing, racing heartbeat, and profuse sweating. People with panic attacks describe it as if they were dying of a heart attack.

Panic attacks usually don’t last longer than five minutes or so, simply because the body cannot absorb the level of hormonal distress shooting through one’s nervous system. The problem, however, is that panic attacks can come in repeating waves, each worse than the last.

Panic attacks lead to phobias

The terror of the experience, especially if the panic attacks occur with some regularity, is that the brain goes into a sustained defensive mode in an attempt to avoid what it considers a potentially threatening situation.

For some, this potential danger includes just leaving the safety of one’s home. This kind of phobia is called Agoraphobia, and according to the American Psychiatric Association, almost two percent of the general population has experienced Agoraphobia.

Avoidance

The main phobia is the constant need to avoid situations that could trigger another panic attack. This accounts for social phobias such as attending social events. Even leaving the safety of one’s home, Agoraphobia, to go food shopping is avoided because of the risk of suffering another panic attack in an unfamiliar location.

Panic attacks can instill so much fear and uncertainty in one’s life; they can often lead to deep depression and a sense of utter hopelessness.

Life-changing events can quickly lead to other high anxiety events, further raising the threat level and increasing instability in one’s life.

Compounding trouble leads to compounding anxiety and panic

For example, a forty-eight-year-old married man lost his job. While looking for another job, he gets into a traffic accident that severely limits his ability to earn a living.

His loss of income and medical bills from his brief hospital stay exhausts his savings. He is forced to downsize to a smaller apartment. Medical bills go unpaid, harassing collection agencies refuse to work with him, and creditors force him into medical bankruptcy.

The threat of homelessness is a very real possibility. This type of stressor can lead to high levels of anxiety that get triggered by our deep-rooted survival instinct, which releases a flood of neural-based hormones that can cause the onset of panic attacks.

Treatment for panic disorder

Most mental health specialists believe combining cognitive and behavioral therapies alongside certain medications can result in successful treatment.

Dr. Arthur B. Hardy, a psychiatrist and leading authority on panic disorders, started a national organization in 1975 specializing in treating panic, the phobias that arise from panic disorder.

To learn more about panic attacks, consult an online mental health professional.