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Panic attacks are actually brought on when experiencing high states of anxiety, but that only helps us when we understand why we suffer with anxiety, and how we can defeat it.

There are many myths out there about the way anxiety effects are health. One of those myths is the ever popular “Anxiety can lead to life threatening conditions.”

What is Anxiety

It’s actually one of the most common emotions we feel as human beings, and serves to protect us from potentially hazardous situations. It’s also that state we experience when we’re anticipating a real or imagined threat.

However, most people who have never experienced a panic attack, or extreme anxiety, fail to realize the terrifying nature of the experience. Extreme dizziness, blurred vision, tingling and feelings of breathlessness – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

When you go through these experiences, it’s very easy to feel like you’re losing control, which is a very scary feeling in itself. To make matters worse, you can’t really understand why this happening to you, and whether or not you’re actually experiencing a more serious medical condition like a heart attack.

A Root Cause of Panic Attacks – The Fight or Flight Response

Most everyone has heard of the fight or flight response that we humans have as a reason for panic attacks. The question to ask yourself is do you feel a connection between the unusual feelings you experience during your panic attack?

The first response most of us experience to an imposing threat or danger is anxiety. The reason for it being called anxiety is because its goal is to make us either stand up and fight the danger or run from it. Thereby the sole purpose of anxiety is really to protect us. The irony here is that for those that have panic attacks feel that the anxiety is actually the threat and this is perhaps is the most significant of causes of panic attacks.

Know that the anxiety that we feel during the fight or flight response was a necessity to the survival of our ancient ancestors- so that when they were faced with a danger their automatic response would kick in and force them into action. This is essential even today, and is very useful to us when we are faced with real threats and have a split second to respond.

Whenever we find ourselves in a potentially dangerous situation, the brain sends specific triggers to the nervous system. This system is responsible for gearing us up to take action (in this case to either fight or run), and the same system is also responsible for calming us down after the situation has been dealt with. To carry out these two vital functions, our nervous system has two subsections, the sympathetic system and the parasympathetic system.

The sympathetic system stimulates our body to release adrenaline, which gives us the ability to take action and to keep taking that action (running away, fighting etc). Once the perceived danger has passed, the parasympathetic system takes over and starts to calm us down again, back into a calm and relaxed state.

Remaining Calm Comes Naturally

Whenever you use some form of “coping strategy” that you may have been taught for controlling your attacks, it’s the parasympathetic system that you are calling into action. One thing worth remembering is that this system will always be brought into action at some point during your anxiety attacks whether you call it into action or not. It’s a built in protection system we posses which helps us survive.

So next time you have a panic attack, try to remember that they cannot do you any physical harm. Your mind will undoubtedly make the sensations last much longer than your body would ever have intended, but sooner or later, everything will start to calm down again. I appreciate that’s little comfort when experiencing an attack, having been there myself, but use it to reassure yourself.

One amazing feature of the fight or flight response is that it can pull blood from other areas of our body and get it to the areas that urgently need it. The body does this by tightening the blood vessels.

If there is a threat of a physical attack what the body will do is constrict the vessels in the skin, fingers, and toes to decrease blood loss and move the blood to the thighs and biceps, areas that need the blood flow to act.

This is why many people feel numbness and tingling during a panic attack – often misinterpreted as some serious health risk-such as the precursor to a heart attack. If you are really worried that such is the case with your situation, visit your doctor and have it checked out. At least then you can put your mind at rest.

Panic Attacks Cause Fear of Suffocation

One of the scariest effects of a panic attack is the fear of suffocating or smothering. It is very common during a panic attack to feel tightness in the chest and throat. I’m sure everyone can relate to some fear of losing control of your breathing. From personal experience, anxiety grows from the fear that your breathing itself would cease and you would be unable to recover. Can a panic attack stop our breathing? No.

During a panic attack the rate at which we take a breath increases and those breaths are not as deep as they usually are. The rapid shallow breathing serves an important function as it gets more oxygen into our tissues so that they are prepared to act. This type of breathing though is often accompanied by feelings of breathlessness, hyperventilation or the feeling of choking and can also lead to chest pain and tightness.

Having experienced extreme panic attacks myself, I remember that on many occasions, I would have this feeling that I couldn’t trust my body to do the breathing for me, so I would have to manually take over and tell myself when to breathe in and when to breathe out. Of course, this didn’t suit my body’s requirement of oxygen and so the sensations would intensify – along with the anxiety. It was only when I employed the technique I will describe for you later, did I let my body continue doing what it does best – running the whole show.

A side-effect of increased breathing, (especially if no actual activity occurs) is that the blood supply to the head is decreased. While such a decrease is only a small amount and is not at all dangerous, it produces a variety of unpleasant but harmless symptoms that include dizziness, blurred vision, confusion, sense of unreality, and hot flushes.

To discover how you can conquer panic attacks and anxiety visit Wendys site at Conquering Panic Attack Symptoms and claim your free report 7 Steps To Conquer Your Anxiety. You are welcome to reprint this article – but get your own unique content version here.

You have shopped until you are about to drop and are waiting your turn at the register, it has been a long wait, and however there is only a sole customer linking you to the cashier. When all of a sudden that familiar sensation begins to build within you, it begins by the tightening of both your throat and your chest as you feel short of breath and a bit dizzy when your heart skips its familiar beat. You wish you were somewhere else besides right here, right now.

A quick scan of the territory – is it threatening? Four unfriendly faces queue behind, one person in front. Pins and needles seem to prick you through your left arm, you feel slightly dizzy, and then the explosion of fear as you dread the worst. You are about to have a panic attack.

You begin to panic even more, as you wonder if this is the big episode that will take you to your knees gasping for breath. Stop right there and begin to focus on the procedures you have learned concerning coping techniques. As your physician has recommended, begin your deep breathing exercises. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

In your mind, you should be thinking pleasant thoughts, which relax you, and again while inhaling – as you exhale you should chant the word Relax in your mind. However, there is a problem when you find that this does not have positive effect and that just in focusing on your breathing makes you even more uncomfortably stressed.

It is all right, just switch to the second coping procedure. Gradually relax your muscles. Begin by tensing your shoulder and hold for ten seconds and then release and again. Still you feel no difference. The very fact that you are running out of coping procedures worsens the panic you feel, as the anxiety seems to worsen. You wish for a close friend or family member to be close by, someone who understands your attacks, rather than the group of strangers where you would feel more confident in experiencing this situation.

Your body stings with the tingling as adrenaline pumps faster in your body, you then feel the terror of losing your complete control right there in the check out line. However, for those around you it is just another day and they have no sense of how you are feeling.

You decide the last option of coping is the next step to take and that is to flee the area. You lay your intended purchase on the counter and make a quick exit as the cashier is left standing watching you with a puzzled look on her face. Although you may be embarrassed you have no time for making excuses, you just need to be alone in order to control the anxiety, which is building inside you. You then get into your car and drive away, riding this out all alone. You fear that this episode will ultimately be the one that pushes you past your limits physically and mentally. However, in just ten minutes the attack begins to fade away. You are haunted by the idea that it is just nine am and you cannot help but to wonder if you will be able to make it through the day.

The scenario above may sound very familiar if you suffer from panic or anxiety attacks. Possibly, even in reading it you felt the induction of panic and feeling of anxiety. Take a deep cleansing breath. Keep in mind that there are as many triggers for panic and anxiety as well as body sensations as there are individuals who experience them, they all differ. On the other hand, perhaps you have experienced it while the dentist cleans your teeth or while for the very first time you travel by air and even possibly, you were at home while doing nothing out of the ordinary.

Nevertheless, you should take comfort in knowing that you are not the only one who suffers from panic attacks. An acute sense of impending doom often accompanies a panic attack. You experience a fear of either collapsing in the middle of the check out line, or that you are about to lose your mind in public.

Did you know that in America alone, estimation has it that nearly five percent of the population suffers from one sort of anxiety disorder or another? This means you are not alone at all. For some, inconsistent anxiety attacks are triggered when having to address a crowd. While there are others who suffer from attacks so frequently, that it keeps them homebound. Physicians refer to frequent panic attacks as an anxiety disorder.

The beginning of your recovery starts here. What you will learn is that there is a very good chance you are about to end the cycle of panic attacks in your life. You will learn not only to regain the carefree life you remember once having, but will also gain new confidence in living. Your answer to living free from “panic” or “anxiety attacks” is at hand.

The trick to panic attacks is wanting to have one-the wanting pushes it away. Can you have a panic attack in this very second? No! You know the saying that “what you resist, persists.” Well that saying applies perfectly to fear. If you resist a situation out of fear, the fear around that issue will persist. How do you stop resisting – you move directly into it, into the path of the anxiety, and by doing so it cannot persist.

In essence what this means is that if you daily voluntarily seek to have a panic attack, you cannot have one. Try in this very moment to have a panic attack and I will guarantee you cannot. You may not realize it but you have always decided to panic. You make the choice by saying this is beyond my control.

Your real safety is the fact that a panic attack will never harm you. That is medical fact. You are safe, the sensations are wild but no harm will come to you. Your heart is racing but no harm will come to you. The situation is perfectly safe even though you may not feel that way at the time.

Author Wendy Brausch runs an anxiety and panic disorder support website. For helpful tips and advice on dealing with panic attack symptoms get her free report Conquer Panic and Anxiety Disorders Click here to get your own unique version of this article with free reprint rights.