Stop Anxiety And Panic Attacks

Useful Advice To Help Stop Anxiety And Panic Attacks

Most of us will suffer from anxiety on at least one occasion during our lives. For example, it is normal to feel anxious before or during situations such as making a public speech, a first date, an exam, or a job interview. However, only some of us are unfortunate enough to have experienced severe anxiety or panic attacks. If you are among those who suffer from severe anxiety or panic attacks, you will know the difference between the symptoms you have experienced and mild everyday anxiety.

Sadly there is no quick fix to enable you to stop a panic attack right now. Learning to control your anxiety takes considerable effort. However, there are many different methods people rely on to stop anxiety and panic attacks, some of which are more beneficial than others.

Avoidance Will Not Help

If you give it some thought, you should be able to determine exactly what triggers your anxiety. For example, because I'm naturally shy I find that having to interact with strangers can make me feel very anxious. In the endeavor to stop anxiety and panic attacks, I could make a point of avoiding people that I don't know so that I wouldn't be forced to interact with them. However, circumventing dealing with the problem of my awkwardness around strangers would not help me in the long run. In fact avoiding strangers and giving in to my fears would effectively stop me from being able to enjoy a normal, healthy life.

Face Your Fears

As horrifying as this may sound to any sufferer, the only effective way to stop anxiety and panic attacks is to gradually put yourself into situations in which you are forced to deal with your fears. Of course if open spaces trigger your panic attacks it would not be wise to visit a rural prairie region of the mid west straight away. The key is to expose yourself to the thing that triggers your attacks gradually. Hence the agoraphobic could begin by making the effort to walk around in his backyard for a minute or two.

While trying to stop anxiety and panic attacks by facing your fears, it is important to ride the feeling out while at the same time acknowledging that the fear is temporary and will not do you any real harm. It might be helpful to find something that distracts you from the situation so that you are focusing on something other than your fear. For instance you could try an exercise such as counting backwards from fifty to zero.