Causes of Panic Attacks
Have you ever had a panic attack? If you have, you know that they feel absolutely awful. At their worst, they can actually feel like they’re going to take your life. And in fact, that can actually happen — but before you panic, let’s take a deep breath. In general, panic attacks are absolutely harmless, and they come because they are triggered by stress, resolving on their own. Medical experts, however, no longer think that they are harmless if you experience them very frequently. Why do they happen? We’ll talk about the symptoms in a minute, but first, let’s talk about what causes them. Panic attacks are not the result of any disease, but instead are the result of an overblown response to fear and stress.
When a person is confronted with a stressful situation, he may fight or flee. As a consequence, his body reacts to the situation and exhibits symptoms of panic attacks. During a panic attack, the body is flooded with epinephrine or adrenaline and the abnormal levels of the hormone triggers the body’s response to the stress. The experience may be as short as fifteen seconds or as long as thirty minutes. It has not been established yet why women are more prone to panic attacks than men.
Panic attacks are so disabling because there are unpredictable, and sufferers can literally experience them any time, anywhere. Panic attack sufferers never know when the next one is going to hit, so that makes the situation even more stressful. When a panic attack starts, there is first a feeling of general unease to mounting fear, followed by several symptoms. You can get panic attacks in stressful situations occasionally no matter who you are, but if you have frequent panic attacks, you have something called “panic disorder.”
It is quite different but relevant to the condition of panic attacks; the affected experiences the same symptoms which can be severe and immobilize the sufferer: fast heart rate or palpitation, excessive sweating, shortness of breath, nausea, dizziness, shaking or trembling, abdominal stress, choking sensations, numbness or tingling sensations, panicky feeling that you are going to die, and fear if losing control.
What causes panic attacks? The mind and the body react to intense fear. In the physical sense, it is traced to genetic malfunction. You can have panic disorder if a family member experienced depression or had episodes of panic attacks. However, medical science cannot pinpoint the exact causes of panic attacks because not all causes are known but the following have been known to cause the onset of these disabling attacks: genetics, stress, and medication.
Stress triggers panic attacks. Persons trying to cope with a separation or grief, and anxiety brought on by feared symptoms of diseases are vulnerable to panic attacks. One may not be able to know he or she is having a panic attack when mounting fear escalates to levels that can send a person to “lose control” of the situation. The body reacts exaggeratedly to the “fear factor” when there is no reason to be terrified.
If you suffer from severe panic attacks, most likely both your mind and body are reacting to fear. For example, if you already are under severe stress or if you suffer from depression, your body can have panic attack reactions, which exacerbates your mental fear, which further provokes physical symptoms, and so on. Panic attacks themselves can become a vicious cycle. It may become so bad, sadly, that thinking of having a panic attack can in fact actually cause one. Your mind first registers fear, then your body responds.
If you have had panic attack symptoms very frequently, see a doctor. First of all, you should rule out any physical disorders that could be actually causing the panic attacks. If none are found, medications can help control the panic attacks, and you may also seek counseling and therapy. These sessions can help you understand your fears, while a trained therapist can also expose you to them so that you must face them and ultimately get them back under control.
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