To those who have never had a full blown attack....I read about a Doctor that had one and said it felt like someone was holding a gun to their head....deciding if or not to pull the trigger.
This is a great view.......
IN A SPONTANEOUS panic attack, your body goes through exactly the same physiological flight reaction that it does in a truly life-threatening situation. The panic attack that wakes you up at night or occurs out of the blue is physiologically indistinguishable from your response to such experiences as your car stalling on the railroad tracks or waking to hear a robber going through your house.
What makes a panic attack unique and difficult to cope with is that these intense bodily reactions occur in the absence of any immediate or apparent danger. Or, in the case of agoraphobia, they occur in response to situations that have no apparent life-threatening potential (such as standing in line at the grocery store or being at home alone). In either case,you don't know why the reaction is happening. And not knowing why--not being able to make any sense out of the fact that your body is going through such an intense response--only serves to make the entire experience even more frightening. Your tendency is to react to sensations that are intense and inexplicable with even more fear and a heightened sense of danger.
No one fully knows at this time why spontaneous panic attacks occur--why the body's natural flight mechanism can come into play for no obvious reason or out of context. Some people believe that there is always some stimulus for a panic attack, even if this is not apparent. Others believe that sudden attacks arise from a temporary physiological imbalance. It is known that there is a greater tendency for panic attacks to occur when a person has been undergoing prolonged stress or has recently suffered a significant loss. However, only some people who have undergone stress or loss develop panic attacks, while others might develop headaches, ulcers, or reactive depression. It is also known that a disturbance in the part of the brain called the locus ceruleusis implicated in panic attacks; but it seems that this disturbance is only one event in a long chain of causes without being the primary cause.
Because there is no immediate or apparent external danger in a panic attack, you may tend to invent or attribute danger to the intense bodily sensations you're going through. In the absence of any real life-threatening situation, your mind may misinterpret what's going on inside as being life- threatening. Your mind can very quickly go through the following process: "If I feel this bad, I must be in some danger. If there is no apparent external danger, the danger must be inside of me." And so it's very common when undergoing panic to invent any (or all) of the following "dangers:"
In response to heart palpitations: "I'm going to have a heart attack" or "I'm going to die."
In response to choking sensations: "I'm going to stop breathing and suffocate."
In response to dizzy sensations: "I'm going to pass out."
In response to sensations of disorientation or feeling "not all there": "I'm going crazy."
In response to "rubbery legs": "I won't be able to walk" or "I'm going to fall."
In response to the overall intensity of your body's reactions: "I'm going to lose complete control over myself."
As soon as you tell yourself that you're feeling any of the above dangers, you multiple the intensity of your fear. This intense fear makes your bodily reactions even worse, which in turn creates still more fear, and you get caught in an upward spiral of mounting panic.
The upward spiral can be avoided if you understand that what your body is going through is not dangerous. All of the above dangers are illusory, a product of your imagination when you're undergoing the intense reactions which constitute panic.
" For me milo100.. the last bit is logical but due to my high blood pressure I have to be very careful not to think that a panic attack could in fact be a heart attack as my doctors have said the symptoms can be the same."
