Every person will experience a panic attack at least once in her life, and because of the similarity with heart attacks, it could be the worst thing they will ever feel. Most of the people will not even realize that they had it since they do not have to be and are not always severe, except when they are. When they are mild, you can deal with them more easily but those big ones will lead to you being in the ER. The similarity between a panic attack and a heart attack is huge, so huge that if you find yourself in the situation with the symptoms of having a heart attack you should not think twice and go to the hospital immediately. Better safe than sorry. It is very important to rule out possible medical causes of chest pain, elevated heart rate and breathing difficulties. When you get diagnosed with the panic disorder you will begin with your therapy and be set on your journey to recovery. You will receive the help you need.

A panic attack can happen anywhere and anytime, it can even wake you up from your sleep. You can almost say that it appeared out of the blue. It is a rush of extreme fear and several physical symptoms that include:

Panic attack symptoms develop fast and abruptly. They last to 30 minutes usually but can be as long as an hour. You can experience them only once or they could be a repeating episode that indicates a panic disorder. If you are diagnosed with a panic disorder, like I was, your body will be in a state of fight-or-flight response and you will notice that you are living your life around attacks, in a fear of their repetition and avoiding any situation that may cause them. I used to withdraw from everything and spent my time between them by anticipating the next one.

You can research panic attacks online or read various medical books, I encourage you to do that, but since there will be no reference links at the end of this post and everything written here is from a personal experience, let me tell you my story before I continue to explain how you can successfully deal with panic disorder.

Four years ago I was diagnosed with a panic disorder, accompanied by agoraphobia and depression. I had five panic attacks every day and was always in and out of hospitals. I was living in a constant state of fear. Either I was experiencing a panic attack or I was fearing the next one. A not so fun way to live your life. It was a living nightmare. I was feeling desperate and incompetent of everything with a constant feeling of helplessness. I was weak and incapable of doing the usual things that humans normally do. You can read all about my nervous breakdown and how I managed to escape the monster in my post Personal journey to a land of mental disorders and back. In there I explained how it all happened to me and why. Here, I will try to focus on panic attacks alone since they are the most terrible thing I ever experienced in my life. If it were not for my loving husband, who was with me on every step of my way to recovery, I don't know where would I have ended up. I am not even sure if I would have recovered at all.

You have to realize, when you are dealing with a severe panic disorder, you are not functioning like a normal person. You are broken. He used to hold my hand and walk up and down our apartment for hours or sit above me while I was sobbing and shaking on the floor. He was with me when I was sleeping, feeding me, driving me to hospitals, talking to me and soothing me. He even needed to physically carry me to the bathroom when I wasn't able to walk. It was a nightmare for him too, a terrible nightmare but he ended up being the true hero. My prince charming that saved me from myself. Whenever I had a panic attack I was thinking that I was going crazy and tried to convince him that I forgot how to breathe. I was sure that my brain stopped working and I could breathe only if I was thinking about it, and don't get me started on how I always thought that I was going to die because my heart was beating so strong and so fast that it was terrifying.

With proper medication, daily exercises (both mental and physical) and a loving support of my husband I managed to beat the monster. I know the monster is stalking me and hiding deep inside of me, waiting for its chance to come back up again and take control of me. I am not gonna let him. We are friends now. I think that is the best thing you can do with your demons, become friends. As long as you are enemies, they can control you. I accept that some situations or people are stress factors, I know myself now, better than I ever did. This was my personal growth experience that made me who I am today, a smiling happy fairy that enjoys life. People are always trying to know everything about everything and they forget to learn about themselves. I know who I am now and I can honestly say that I am happy because I have LEARNED how to be happy. I have learned what life is supposed to be about and discovered its hidden meaning. I say hidden because not a lot of people know about it. It is actually in plain sight, within our grasp and ready for taking and realizing. I know what The Meaning Of Life is, do you?

When you get frequent panic attacks you will probably be diagnosed with a panic disorder like I was. It is characterized by major changes in your behavior and daily panic attacks. There are two stages that you will face, anxiety and phobia.

Fear of fear is the anxiety part. You are always feeling tense, you are always troubled and worrying about the next panic attack. I am not sure how to explain this properly. Imagine a deep state of fear and shock. You probably experienced that feeling when you got some bad news, by reading a scary book or when seeing a horror movie. Now imagine that relief from that never comes. You are always afraid and disabled from doing your normal daily activities. The natural way of dealing with this is to begin avoiding everything that you think will lead to the next panic attack. It starts with avoidance of certain situations and then you gradually end up ignoring everything that you see as dangerous. That can be almost everything, even food and people in general. You begin to develop phobias from everything and end up with a diagnosed agoraphobia. Yeah, I had that sucker too.

Agoraphobia and panic disorder usually end up being together, they are a deadly super villains, a nasty combo that will control you forever if you do not seek professional help. I avoided going anywhere without my husband, who made me feel safe, but ended up not leaving my house at all for a year. Social gatherings, restaurants and public transportation were out of the question, I couldn't even go to the store alone. Any form of transportation was a big no-no, even being in cars. I quit eating and drinking everything that I thought would provoke an attack. I once ended up in a hospital from dehydration and hypoglycemia. I quit eating and drinking all together. All that is behind me now, well, most of it. I don't drink alcohol anymore, haven't had wine or beer for two years, and avoid public transportation. The rest of the stuff that was bothering me is far far behind. It is just a memory of someone that I used to be but am not anymore.

Panic disorder is treated with medication and therapy. Drugs that are prescribed are antidepressants and benzodiazepines. Antidepressants have a long effect and change your brain chemistry, you take them every day for a long period of time while benzodiazepines are a quick fix. You take them only during a panic attack to relieve you of symptoms. There is a huge difference between these two medications. Benzodiazepines are highly addictive and antidepressants are not. Your first big goal should be to manage to live on antidepressants alone, without the benzodiazepines. I was taking benzodiazepines for about 3 months and antidepressants for a year and a half.

As for the therapy, there are several ones your doctor may suggest to you. I went through cognitive behavioral therapy that changed my thinking patterns. I learned how to deal with my fears in a realistic way and had to do a lot of different mental exercises. You could say that I learned how to be a human again, I learned how to live and how to think, build myself up from scratch.

When you experience a panic attack, your rational part of the brain stops. All thinking stops and you are going only on emotion and impulses. The fear is overwhelming but the only thing you have to do is THINK. You need to establish a normal thought pattern again.

There are helpful techniques of dealing with the attack. Your body is behaving in a way that is fueled with fear and you need to trigger your brain to come back to normal state. Math was my savior, I counted everything, from tiles and windows to all the things that I could see. Here are some helpful tips that I found to be extremely useful in getting your mind back to reality and rational way of thinking:

This is the most common exercise. Look around the room and start naming the things you can see, count five things and than count five more. You can even try describing them. This will help your brain to focus and use descriptive words from your memory. It will help you think.

Your body is filled up with adrenaline and you need to burn it up. Walk around while raising and lowering your hands. Stomp your feet or clap your hands. Push-ups and sit-ups help a lot. You may feel like you just want to lie down but that is the worst thing you can do. Your body will be calm but inside you will feel like you will explode. Walk around instead, even slowly. You need to be moving in some way, at least do yoga or stretching, anything but being still.

By explaining, in detail, what are you experiencing and how you are feeling you are using your thoughts and words. By explaining emotion you are feeling it less. Different parts of your brain are starting to work again. Talk about it or write it down, but explain it the best you can.

It helped me to go online and read about professional medical background of what was happening to me. This will bring you right back to reality because you will get to know why is your body behaving like it is. You will understand it and knowledge is you biggest ally against fear.

You can count for starters but then move on to addition and subtraction. Find some simple math assignments online or ask a person next to you to quiz you by giving you a little test. There is nothing better than math to quickly get you back on the right track.

There are a lot of excellent breathing technique that will help you calm yourself down and be more relaxed. For information and guidance about them please visit my post Breathing techniques

I do hope that this article helped you to deal with your panic attacks better or that it educated you a little so you can be able to know how to behave if you see someone having a panic attack next to you. There is nothing that can not be fixed. You are stronger than you think, and as I always say, more powerful than you realize. I wish you all the best on your life journey and am happy to answer all your questions. I am here for you whenever I can be and the biggest advice I can give you is: "Learn to laugh at yourself." Humor is a powerful weapon. Learn how to have fun and enjoy life. It is too short sometimes. There is nothing more important than your happiness and satisfaction, NOTHING. I will leave you with a beautiful quote from Gandhi that sums up my philosophy of happiness.