Good News

Almost all panic attacks are learned.
The first one was probably a response to a really stressful event. Because it was so intense, our minds and bodies remember what they were like - in other words, we’ve learned the pattern.
That’s why panic attacks are mostly associated with places, actions or situations where we’ve once experienced one.
When we remember how it felt, we can remember how scary it was and get scared again. That raises our levels of anxiety and so we produce more anxiety hormones.

We have become afraid of fear.
The higher level of anxiety hormones may become our new norm, so our body thinks it’s supposed to produce more of them now. (That’s how some anti-stress drugs work: in simple terms, they "eat up" the surplus hormones so our body can re-learn how little stress it is really supposed to be producing.)

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Un-learning Panic Attacks

So here’s a technique for un-learning panic attacks.
With a pen and paper make a list of all the times you’ve ever been in that situation and been OK.
Maybe you’ve become afraid of car-parks because someone once followed you round one. But think of all the times you weren’t followed before that and were OK.
All the times you parked at the supermarket to buy the groceries - that’s probably several hundred times, like when you were getting ready for a dinner for Auntie Flo or someone’s birthday, or just the weekly shop. When you went up town to do your Christmas shopping. When you picked someone up from the station. When you dropped your kids off at school. When you took your car in to be serviced.
So it’s not car-parks that are scary, it’s the person who followed you. Now you could think of that actual event. Get it really specific to that one time and place and person. Remember whether it was day or night, morning or evening, sunny or rainy, July or October. Were you in a dark corner of the basement? Or on the roof in the snow? Remember that one person, and then remember all the hundreds and thousands of ordinary people you’ve met who’ve never done you any harm.
The more you can remember times when you were OK, the more you’ll be OK in the future.

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How Can I Relax?

Taking up Yoga will help you achieve true relaxation. You can get teach yourself books about it or join a class.
Relaxation tapes can work wonders. Practice using them when you’re calm so your mind will be used to that way of focusing when you need it.

Try this Countdown for success:
Find a couple of minutes to sit quietly two or three times a day.
Close your eyes and behind your closed eyelids look down to your solar plexus (in the middle of your body a hand’s width below your ribs).
Picture the number one down there.
As you slowly breathe in see the number one rise up high, then as you breathe out see it sink again until you can park it down low.
Then picture the number two down there, breathe in and raise it high, breathe out and see it sink back low, and park it beside the number one.
Do the same thing for the rest of the numbers up to twelve.
If you lose count it’s OK to start again.

Practicing this exercise makes it easier and learning to focus your mind helps, so that when you feel stressed you can "head off" a panic attack before it develops, or make it shorter and less intense.

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So What Can I Do?

It helps to know that you are not the only one who feels this way. Panic attacks are a recognised condition and they are quite common, though you may not be aware of other sufferers because people often try to hide what’s happening to them out of shame or embarrassment or a feeling that somehow they’re a sign of failure or inadequacy. In fact they’re not. They’re just a chemical response in your body and they don’t last forever.

Your doctor can prescribe medication which relieves the symptoms. One of the tablets prescribed is Propranolol. This is such a widely-needed and valuable drug that the man who invented it won a Nobel Prize! Your doctor won’t be critical if you explain what’s happening to you. Asking for help is a sign of strength because you’ve recognised you’ve had a problem and are doing something about it, rather than just suffering passively. After all, if your TV went wrong or the clutch went on your car, wouldn’t it be sensible to ask an expert to help fix it?

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What Else Can I Do?

It’s useful to know that a panic attack is not a heart attack, which has different symptoms
A gland in your neck controls your heart rhythm so gently stroking down your neck from under your jaw and either side of your Adam’s Apple with one finger and thumb will relax the release of the hormones involved and will be soothing.
Occupying your mind by working out what’s triggered the attack will help. Sometimes it can be something that reminds you of the trigger, so be your own detective.
Some gentle exercise will help by using up surplus anxiety hormones. You could for example dance to music or go for a walk or use an exercise bike.
Ordinary tea contains a muscle relaxant, so having a cuppa is helpful - and gives you something to do.
Smoking may feel soothing but usually if you stop smoking, or cut down to around 5 mild cigarettes a day, your symptoms will lessen or cut out completely.
Cutting out Coca-Cola and caffeinated coffee also reduces symptoms. Sometimes just drinking strong coffee is enough to trigger an increased heart-rate.

Your body and your mind work on a linked system. When your mind feels stress it makes you breathe faster and more shallowly, so extra oxygen is sent to your muscles and brain (hence the tingling and spaced-out feeling) and less goes to your digestive system (hence the weirdness in your tummy). The increased heart-rate is so that this oxygen can help you respond quicker to danger. If you break the cycle at any point things can get back to normal. So gently making your breathing slower and deeper will help stop the panic, calm your heart-rate and slow the whole shebang down to normal.

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Ettie’s Story

I remember the first time I had a panic attack. I was 31 and had had three miscarriages for which my husband blamed me, but the NHS wouldn’t do anything. I already felt terrible both physically and emotionally, and my toddler son was very demanding. My husband was really stressed - he’d been made redundant and was now earning a pittance for shift-work in a rotten job. He was really prickly so we weren’t getting on too well. One night when my son was at my mother’s and my husband was at work, I went downs to the kitchen at about eleven o’clock to make a cup of hot chocolate.

And surprised a burglar. He grabbed the bread-knife and threatened me. My heart began beating like crazy. I screamed and ran away, out the front door and to my neighbours’ house, but they weren’t in. I was terrified the man would follow me. I ran to the phone box at the end of the road and called the police. It seemed to take ages but they eventually arrived. I got in their car and they went to the house. The burglar was long gone, so the police brought me in to find out what was missing. Not much, really, just the video and a portable radio, though the place was a bit of a mess. One of the constables made me a cup of tea, and the other one had a look round. I knew I’d left everywhere locked up because I always do. He said the burglar must have got in through the window by using a wire to pull up the catch. After we’d filled in the paperwork they asked if there was anyone I wanted to call, but I didn’t know anybody who lived nearby and my mum could scarcely get my lad up in the middle of the night, so the police left me alone and went away.

All this time my heart had been going like the clappers. It was booming, really shaking my rib-cage, and I was sure I was having a heart-attack. But there was no pain down my arm and I could still move about despite feeling faint and peculiar. I thought about calling an ambulance but they charge you money if they don’t think you need one and I’d only got about 50p. I was too scared to walk down to the cashpoint - it was about half-past one by this time - and I just never thought of getting a taxi to take me to the hospital via the bank. Anyway, I didn’t want to make a fuss. Besides, I was scared that if I left the house, or even went upstairs to bed, that man would come again. I couldn’t help thinking how furious my husband was going to be, and that he was bound to blame me somehow. But it was really horrible, knowing that man had been in our house, going through our things, and I hadn’t even known it. I kept being afraid someone would break in again.

So I sat up all night. I tried lying on the sofa but it seemed to make my heart beat louder and I was scared I’d die in my sleep. It was really drumming in my ears. I made myself check all the doors and windows over and over again. About 3 a.m. I rang the Samaritans and the woman I spoke to was great. Gradually my heart-beat subsided, though I was still too frightened to sleep, but when my husband came in he blamed me just like I’d thought he would, and we had a blazing row. I was relieved when he took himself off to bed.

The lady from the Samaritans had suggested I go to see my GP in the morning if I still felt ill, so I did. The doctor had been totally unsupportive about the miscarriages, and he wasn’t much use now. He more or less said, "If you think you’ve had a heart-attack we’d better get it checked out at the hospital." I know now, years later, he was doing it to reassure me, but I’d wanted him to say, "No, of course it wasn’t a heart-attack," and he hadn’t. That scared me even more.

For the next couple of years I kept having to go to the heart clinic, and it got to the stage where every time I tried to go to sleep I’d have what I know now were panic attacks. I only wish I’d known it then. What with that keeping me awake for hours in terror, and nightmares when I did drop off, I was permanently exhausted. Even when we could afford a car I was too scared to drive. When my husband pushed me into it I almost crashed. Then I had a major panic attack on a busy road and he shouted at me.

It wasn’t just in the car or the house.

I was so scared I was going crazy I couldn’t get on buses or trains. When I tried once, I collapsed on the stairs at the railway station. It was horrible. People must have thought I was drunk because they kept walking around me, until an old lady came to help. After that I had panic attacks about stairs, too.

For a while I couldn’t go up town even with someone else. Things with my husband went from bad to worse. I’d have left him except I had dreadful visions of myself dropping dead in front of my little boy and he’d be left crying over my corpse with nobody to help him.

Two years later, after loads of ultra-sounds, echo-scans and ECGs, I finally saw a doctor at the hospital who said I hadn’t had a heart-attack. She confirmed it was a panic attack and that they were different. By this time we had a different GP. She prescribed me Propranolol, and I could have kissed her. The panic attacks started getting less severe and some nights I actually didn’t have one at all! She also sent me to a stress therapy group. It was one and a half hours every Thursday evening at a local mental hospital, and though it could have been better run I did learn how panic attacks work and what to do about them. I also came to realise that most men don’t behave like my husband did so I didn’t have to put up with his aggression and bullying. I got strong enough to get a decent job. I left my husband who’d started to get violent, and set up home a safe distance away with my little boy. I still had panic attacks quite a lot at night, and it didn’t help when my husband would ring up at 2 a.m. and threaten me, though he never actually did anything. I stopped that by recording his calls (just leave the answerphone on).

Gradually I learned that panic attacks don’t kill you. One would start and I’d just feel so bored by it. It was like I couldn’t be bothered to go into the anxiety any more. Stopping smoking and changing from coffee to tea also helped. So did Paul McKenna’s relaxation video, and some meditation techniques I learned from a Yoga class. I think probably the assertiveness course I took helped too, but the best thing I ever did was have one-to-one therapy with a Transactional Analysis psychotherapist. I’ve made new decisions about myself and I feel better than I have ever done in my whole entire life.

I haven’t had a panic attack at all for years now. I have to think hard to work out when I had my last one, it’s so long ago. It must be at least nine years. I drive to work every day and can even drive on motorways. I can travel quite happily on public transport, and enjoy meeting new people on train journeys. I no longer have to be embarrassed about being scared of stairs. I’m happily remarried, and though I never had another child, my lovely new husband is a wonderful father to my son.

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