Panic attacks – the good news

DEBBIE JACOB

SO, I’M LISTENING to an audio book titled Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to Use the Neuroscience of Fear to End Anxiety, Panic and Worry by Elizabeth M Karle hoping it will help me deal with panic attacks.

Be grateful if you have never had a panic attack because they are a frightening experience. Be forewarned that you could have one unexpectedly.

When I experience a panic attack, I can’t speak and I feel like I can’t catch my breath. Often times I am not sure what’s happening. There must be a trigger, but they seem to come out of nowhere. Still, I know many of my panic attacks have been triggered by the fear of facing a crowd.

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when I suffered severe, debilitating migraines and visual impairment (half of my vision would disappear) simply because someone asked me to speak in public. The thought of standing before a crowd would give me a panic attack followed by a migraine that rendered me bed-ridden until after the crowd-related event.

As you can see, Rewire Your Anxious Brain… would definitely be the book for me. I tell you this not just to point you in the direction of such a book if you suffer from an anxiety disorder, but also to remind you that you never know what useful facts you will discover by reading.

From this book, I learned that it is perfectly normal “to have a fearful response in situations that aren’t really dangerous.” Karle says many people have brains that send messages saying standing in front of an audience is dangerous. “Studies have shown that fear of public speaking is the most commonly reported fear, surpassing fear of flying, fear of spiders, fear of heights and fear of tightly enclosed spaces.”

I find this very comforting.

Karle claims that evolutionary scientists say our brains may be wired to interpret eyes watching us during a speech as a potentially dangerous situation. Or, Karle says, “the risk of rejection by a group of observers comes from an ancient fear of being rejected by one’s clan.”

Rejection from a clan was serious business. It meant that you would be out there alone facing serious predators that want to eat you. “A likely death sentence,” Karle says. I can buy that.

“The human amygdala (in our brain) reacts to protect us from being in the vulnerable situation of being observed by potentially hostile animals — including other humans.”

Of course, we don’t necessarily know this. The author says we think that we’re “afraid of being criticised, humiliated or making a mistake while your amygdala is operating from a more prehistoric perspective.”

It turns out that anxiety attacks have deep roots in ancient protection systems buried deep inside our brains. What’s more important is the fact that scientists now all seem to agree on the neuroplasticity of the brain. We can apparently create new neurological connections to deal with negative outcomes like anxiety.

This is good news because it means that we’re not stuck in Neanderthal-like behaviours. We can change — to a certain extent — how our brain reacts in situations. If this weren’t true, the authors say, we wouldn’t have dogs and cats for pets because we’d remember how they used to chase us in order to eat us.

One of the reasons I bring up panic attacks at this time is because many students are heading for exams in May. We know that students — and people in general for that matter — often suffer panic attacks silently, and books about panic attacks tell us that fear of tests can lead to such attacks. While it is not always possible to stop a panic attack, it is comforting to know that we can find ways of dealing with them.

Here are some tips I picked up for dealing with panic attacks:

1. Concentrate on breathing. Breathe slowly and deeply. Try to relax your muscles.

2. Remind yourself this feeling will pass. Stay positive.

3. Movement helps. I feel more comfortable if I walk rather than wait out the awful experience.

4. Ask for help if you can. If someone is aware you’re having a panic attack, they can talk you through it.

Of course none of these observations and none of these books are substitutes for getting professional advice. I just think it helps to know you’re not alone when it comes to panic attacks.

It also helps to know that science is on our side.