Panic attacks are anxiety attacks which have physical and cognitive symptoms that people find very distressing. A defining feature of a panic attack is
By the time people come to me they’ve often been to the family medicine doctor or emergency department and have since been discharged with a clean bill of health physically, but with the potential and more likely diagnosis of anxiety and panic disorder.
Sometimes people panic when faced with clear triggers, for example, being in a lift, or being treated badly at work. For other people, panic attacks seem to come out of nowhere, and sometimes in the middle of the night. The sense that people can’t seemingly predict when a panic attack might happen makes people believe they are helpless as they become afraid that it could happen at
Panic disorder is one of my favourite things to treat. Firstly, because panic responds very well to psychological treatment and my patients often experience relief within just a few sessions. In this case, we would focus on gaining an understanding of the triggers and factors that keep the panic going, and I provide strategies to help people cope with panic attacks should they occur and we reduce the likelihood of them happening again. The central feature of this way of working is to help people become aware of their thoughts and the meaning they attribute to their physical anxiety symptoms and encouraging them to respond to these anxious thoughts differently. In so doing, anxiety lessens and so too does the accompanying physical discomfort. This is essentially a CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) approach to dealing with panic.
For other people, they’d like to explore why panic happened in the first place. This lends itself to longer-term work where we work together to think about the aspects of early experiences and later and current life events and relationships that might be causing a person to feel anxious and susceptible to panic attacks. This longer-term work involves a combination of CBT to provide immediate coping strategies, as well as a more exploratory approach where I draw upon a number of models to inform my thinking and provide a tailored approach to understand and best assist my client. Hearing my patients’ stories and helping them make sense of hitherto possibly unremarkable events as potential contributing factors in their current panic is the other reason I like working with people with this challenge. Helping people reflect on patterns and experiences with a view to making changes that alleviate their current anxiety and panic is deeply rewarding as we can reduce the likelihood of panic happening again.
If you’d like to know more about panic attacks, you might find this page helpful. https://vivamus.me/panic-attacks/ It includes a great video which helps understand panic attacks as a manifestation of distress we may not yet be aware of.
So whether it’s a short-term strategy-based approach you’re after or a combination of coping and exploring – our team of psychologists are very experienced in dealing with panic and other anxiety disorders.