Anxiety & Panic Attacks

 

Anxiety and panic attacks are experienced when emotions and feelings relating to some event in the past that the person may have no conscious memory of come to the surface. Hypnoanalysis can be very effective in revealing those memories and releasing their effects.

 

Panic Attacks

 

To be diagnosed as a panic attack, four or more of the following symptoms should be present:

             Shortness of breath

             Palpitations

             Faintness, dizziness or nausea

             Numbness, tingling

             Sweating, trembling

             Hot or cold flushes

             Chest pain

             Fear of loss of control or that you are going to die.

 

Panic attacks are due to the fight or flight response that human beings have in a situation of danger.

 

Fight or Flight Response

 

Humans have a primitive autonomic reflex to danger, inherited from our early ancestors. The reflex was originally a life saving mechanism that stimulated and energised their body and mind to give extra strength and durability for short periods of time in order to deal with the crisis at hand. One of two courses of action would generally take place. Either the person had to fight for his life or run away. In other words, the choices were fight or flight. Whatever course of action took place would involve a considerable amount of physical effort, which would burn off the extra energy and neutralise the body back to normal. The responses that cause the fight or flight response are brought about by a combination reaction of the endocrine system (hormones) and the sympathetic nervous system acting on the endocrine system and viscera.

 

When a person is faced with real danger they take the appropriate action, the body then returns to normal, but during a panic attack the symptoms seem to arise from seemingly harmless situations, the person cannot identify the threat and the body remains in a fight or flight mode.