What Happens During A Panic Attack
People often complain that their panic attack come on out of the blue, leaving them feeling terrified and paralyzed.
When I was a kid, I suffered from panic attacks. They felt random to me, but they usually were not when I had the mental clarity to reflect. This didn’t really help me in the moment though.
Then a clinician explained exactly what was happening to me physically. I felt less “crazy” and a lot more in control.
Panic Attacks Can Be Scary – Miami Therapy
A study at SMU, recently discovered that people experience significant physiological instability 1 hour before they reported a panic attack. They just aren’t aware of what is happening in their bodies, or they simply cannot feel it.
The new findings suggest sufferers of panic attacks may be highly sensitive to — but unaware of — an accumulating pattern of subtle physiological instabilities that occur before an attack. Monitoring data also showed these patients were hyperventilating on a chronic basis.
This is why typical therapy, like CBT, is ineffective when working with panic attacks. You can’t reason your way out of something you can’t feel or understand. You need to work with two things: the sympathetic nervous system and the vagus nerve.
The sympathetic nervous system is mainly activated by stress and prepares the body for battle. It is a survival mechanism that increases heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar and dilates the pupils. It’s supposed to kick in when you’re facing immediate danger, but if the sympathetic nervous system becomes overburdened by prolonged stress, it will let you know.
The vagus nerve connects the brain to the tongue, pharynx, vocal chords, lungs, heart, stomach and intestines to different glands that produce enzymes and hormones, influencing digestion, metabolism, and more.
How To Manage A Panic Attack – Miami Therapy
Breathing is one of the fastest ways to influence our nervous system.
Move your stomach and diaphragm with the breath and slow down your breathing. Vagus nerve stimulation happens when your breath is slowed from a typical 10-14 breaths per minute to 5-7 breaths per minute.
Inhale and count to 5
hold briefly
Exhale to 10
Try it out.