Experienced any Anxiety Panic Attack Disorders in the Past??

August 27, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Anxiety Stories, Panic Causes, Panic Therapy, Panic Tips 

If you have experienced stress-related disorders in the past, or if you’re noticing that your stress level is definitely starting to affect your health, you’ll want to find out all you can about protecting yourself so that you can avoid having an anxiety panic attack. Here are some of the indications that you may be having a panic attack, as well as some methods you can use for treatment.

First, it is important to realize that it is normal to experience a moderate amount of anxiety in everyday life. The things that may occur at school or home tend to cause a considerable amount of stress, and if you have a large project to finish or are making a major life change, it is completely natural to feel stressed. However, when you notice that you are anxious the majority of the time, or that you dread the ‘normal’ activities that will make your day run smoother, it is time to seek help.

A panic attack happens when you have a sudden surge of fear that feels completely overwhelming. An anxiety panic attack is a lot more intense than just feeling ‘regular’ feelings of anxiousness, and unfortunately, this condition is a lot more common than you think. About one in every seventy five people in the world will experience an anxiety panic attack at some point in life, but there are ways for you to treat this condition.

When the fear or stress that you experience has become intense, try to get to a place where you can calm down and gather your thoughts. If you can not slip away to be by yourself, try counting to yourself or concentrating on your breathing so that you can calm your body down. This will also help to slow your heart rate and will take away any numbness or tingling you may feel in your fingers and toes, which are common symptoms of an anxiety panic attack.

You can also decrease your chances of having a panic attack by paying attention to the foods you eat. Some people are not able to tolerate coffee or other drinks that contain caffeine, so if you are already leading a pretty high-strung life, you may want to opt for drinking tea or fruit juices in the morning in order to get the right amount of antioxidants for the day. You may also want to cut down on eating foods that are high in sugar, since these can cause anxiety panic attack symptoms in both adults and children.

In order to find out more about how to protect yourself from having panic attacks, visit sites like www.medicinenet.com or www.webmd.com.

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Suffering with Anxiety Disorders?

August 25, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Anxiety Stories, Anxiety Symptoms, Panic Causes 

If you have been having trouble sleeping lately, or haven’t been eating regularly, you may have one or more anxiety disorders due to extreme stress. Here is some information about the different types of conditions and disorders that are associated with stress, as well as ways that you can treat them.

There are five main types of anxiety disorders–generalized anxiety, OCD, panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and social phobia. If you are generally anxious, this could be due to high-stress situations you may be experiencing at home or on the job, and chemical imbalances in the brain caused by food or lack of amino acids could play a role in your condition as well. Individuals with OCD, or obsessive compulsive disorder, have to have things in their home or office a certain way, or will develop compulsive habits such as opening and closing doors a set number of times each day, or washing their hands several times consecutively. PTSD is the body’s reaction to a dangerous or painful event that may have taken place in a patient’s life. Children can experience this disorder as well, and the condition may be characterized by not talking for months at a time, as well as symptoms like bed wetting and acting out in school.

If you want to try natural treatments for anxiety disorders, you may want to try supplements like 5-HTP, which is a very effective treatment for getting rid of depression. You can also try SAM-e, which helps to increase the levels of serotonin in the body and improve your mood. Taking more B vitamins has also been proven to help with anxiety disorders, so taking a multivitamin that is high in B12 and B6, as well as purchasing separate dosages of the supplements may help. Your diet may also be contributing to the level of stress or nervousness that you feel. If you’re eating foods that are high in sugar and artificial dyes, your body may be reacting negatively to these substances; this is quite common in children, so a change in diet may definitely help.

There are a number of new treatments on the market for disorders associated with nervousness and social disorders, so if you or your child is experiencing symptoms, be sure to talk to your family physicians to get referrals to licensed therapists that can help you to work out your feelings and uncover the reasons for your nervousness or sadness. More traditional medications such as Praxil and Prozac are also available at most doctor’s offices, so medication in addition to therapy may be what you need to start–and complete–the healing process. For more information on anxiety disorders and how you can get the help you need, visit www.nimh.org or www.webmd.com.

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The Easy Calm Review

August 17, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Anxiety Stories, Anxiety Symptoms 

EasyCalm is a 10 part downloadable video series… no waiting for DVD’s in the mail. This allows you to get started right away. The entire series is well over 3 hours in length so you are definitely getting a full bang for your buck with the amount of content delivered.

The quality of the videos are very good, they are properly lit and the audio is recorded well, making it easy to watch and listen.

The videos follow a logical progression as you go from #1 through to #10. Jon Mercer does a good job of not jumping around or going off on rabbit trails.

In my opinion there is a good balance of instruction, practical “life application” steps, helpful exercises and simple assignments.

The videos are filmed to give you the feel of being in a one on one coaching session. Jon Mercer comes across as very personable, non-threatening, reassuring, accepting and easy to understand. He doesn’t use complicated words or psychological terminology. He is very realistic and doesn’t make wild unbelievable claims.

Jon mercer personally suffered from anxiety disorders for 25 years. After discovering his “secret” he traveled around the world personally coaching others before putting his system into this current video treatment program.

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Are You Free of Panic Attacks?

August 14, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Anxiety Medicine, Anxiety Stories, Panic Hypnosis, Panic Tips, Panic Treatments 

You may not realize it, but you may suffer from something that can take over your whole world if you let it. You’ll recognize the symptoms, but you’ll have no idea what’s behind them.
Panic attacks are debilitating. One moment, you’re living your day to day lifestyle and the next, you find yourself paralyzed with the feeling that you’ve lost all control. You worry about the possibility of something happening to you. It all comes on so quickly and unexpected, that you’re blown away and the only thing you want to do is go right back home.
While they can be caused by a number of things – heredity, biological forces, even exaggerated thinking – the main culprit is usually stress. As stress plays such a huge factor in our day to day lives, we don’t realize just how profoundly we’re affected until something highly stressful approaches and we’re struck with a panic attack, afraid of absolutely everything that may come our way. Finding a proper stress relief is crucial in order to help limit the number of panic attacks a person has at any given point in their life. If stress is controlled before panic and anxiety set in, there is a better likelihood of being able to stop panic attacks before they start.
The symptoms of a panic attack are obvious enough: the rapid heartbeat, difficulty breathing, the feeling of dizziness and dread, trembling, sudden chills,and the pins and needles feeling in your fingers and toes are only a few of many symptoms. In any given year, there millions of people who experience a panic attack – some of which experience repeated panic attacks.
The best course of action for panic attacks would be to talk to your doctor, who can prescribe medications and forms of therapy to assist with the treatment of those feelings of panic. Only your doctor would know the treatment that is best for you. While a panic attack may leave you feeling the need to hide and can feel as though it controls every aspect of your life, it doesn’t have to. With proper treatment and reduced stress, you can reduce the number of panic attacks you have, and can even eliminate them! A happy, healthy life is once again within your reach.

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Public Speaking and Panic Attacks

August 14, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Anxiety Stories, Panic Therapy 

It is often observed that many people’s top ranking fear is not death but having to speak in public. The joke is that these people would rather be lying in the casket at the funeral than giving the eulogy. Public speaking for people who suffer from panic attacks or general anxiety often becomes a major source of worry weeks or even months before the speaking event is to occur.

These speaking engagements do not necessarily have to be the traditional “on a podium” events but can be as simple as an office meeting where the individual is expected to express an opinion or give verbal feedback. The fear of public speaking and panic attacks in this case centers on having an attack while speaking. The individual fears being incapacitated by the anxiety and hence unable to complete what he or she is saying. The person imagines fleeing the spotlight and having to make all kinds of excuses later for their undignified departure out the office window….

This differs slightly from the majority of people who fear public speaking because their fear tends to revolve around going blank while speaking or feeling uncomfortable under the spotlight of their peers. The jitters or nerves of speaking in public are of course a problem for this group as well, but they are unfamiliar with that debilitating threat which is the panic attack, as they most likely have not experienced one before.

So how should a person with an anxiety issue tackle public speaking?

Stage one is accepting that all these bizarre and quite frankly unnerving sensations are not going to go away overnight. In fact, you are not even going to concern yourself with getting rid of them for your next talk. When they arrive during a speech/meeting, you are going to approach them in a new manner. What we need to do is build your confidence back to where it used to be before any of these sensations ever occurred. This time you will approach it in a unique, empowering manner, allowing you to feel your confidence again. It is said that most of the top speakers are riddled with anxiety before speaking, but they somehow use this nervousness to enhance their speech. I am going to show you exactly how to do this, although I know that right now if you suffer from public speaking and panic attacks you may find it difficult to believe you can ever overcome it.

My first point is this and it is important. The average healthy person can experience an extreme array of anxiety and very uncomfortable sensations while giving a speech and is in no danger of ever losing control, or even appearing slightly anxious to the audience. No matter how tough it gets, you will always finish your piece, even if at the outset it feels very uncomfortable to go on. You will not become incapacitated in any way.

The real breakthrough for if you suffer from public speaking and panic attacks happens when you fully believe that you are not in danger and that the sensations will pass.

“I realize you (the anxiety) hold no threat over me.”

What keeps a panic attack coming again and again is the fear of the fear—the fear that the next one will really knock your socks off and you feel you were lucky to have made it past the last one unscathed. As they were so unnerving and scary, it is your confidence that has been damaged by previous anxiety episodes. Once you fully understand you are not under any threat, then you can have a new response to the anxiety as it arises while speaking.

Defeating public speaking and panic attacks…

There is always a turning point when a person moves from general anxiety into a panic attack, and that happens with public speaking when you think to yourself:

“I won’t be able to handle this in front of these people.”

That split second of self-doubt leads to a rush of adrenaline, and the extreme anxiety arrives in a wave like format. If, however, when you feel the initial anxiety and you react with confidence that this is not a threat to you, you will move out of the anxiety rapidly. Using this new approach is a powerful ally because it means it is okay to feel scared and feel the anxiety when speaking–that is fine; you are going to feel it and move with and through the sensations in your body and out the other side. Because he or she is feeling very anxious, often before the talk has begun, that person may feel they have already let themselves down. Now, you can relax on that point. It is perfectly natural to feel the anxiety. Take for example the worst of the sensations you have ever experienced in this situation—be it general unease to loss of breath. You will have an initial automatic reaction that says:

“Danger–I’m going to have an episode of anxiety here and I really can’t afford that to happen.”

At this point most people react to that idea and confirm it must be true because of all of the unusual feelings they are experiencing. This is where your thinking can lead you down a train of thought that creates a cycle of anxiety that produces a negative impact on your overall presenting skills.

So let that initial “oh dear, not now” thought pass by, and follow it up immediately with the attitude of:

“There you are–I’ve been wondering when you would arrive. I’ve been expecting you to show up—by the way, I am not in the least threatened by any of the strange sensations you are creating—I am completely safe here.”

The key to controlling your fear of public speaking and panic attacks is that instead of pushing the emotional energy and excitement down into your stomach, you are moving out through it. Your body is in a slightly excited state, exactly as it should be while giving a speech, so release that energy in your self-expression. Push it out through your presentation not down into your stomach. You push it out by expressing yourself more forcefully. In this way you turn the anxiety to your advantage by using it to deliver a speech where you come across more alive, energetic and in the present moment. When you notice the anxiety drop as it does when you willingly move into it. Fire a quick thought off when you get a momentary break (as I am sure you have between pieces), asking it for “more.” You want more of its intense feelings as you are interested in them and are absolutely not threatened by them.

It seems like a lot of things to be thinking about while talking to a group of people, but it is not really. You’d be amazed how many different non-related thoughts you can have while speaking. This approach is about adopting a new attitude of confidence to what you might have deemed a serious threat up until now. This tactic will truly help you with fear of public speaking and panic attacks you have associated with them.

If your predominant fear of the speaking engagement is driven by a feeling of being trapped, then I would suggest factoring in some mental releases that can be prepared before the event. For example, some meetings/speeches allow for you to turn the attention back to the room to get feedback etc. from the group.

If possible, you might want to prepare such opportunities in your own mind before the engagements. This is not to say you have to ever use them, but people in this situation often remark that just having small opportunities where attention can be diverted for the briefest of moments can make the task seem less daunting. It my even be something as simple as having people introduce themselves or opening the floor to questions. I realize these diversions are not always possible and depend on the situation, but anything you can factor in that makes you feel less trapped or under the spotlight is worth the effort and can help alleviate fear of public speaking and panic attacks.

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