Anxiety Panic Attacks and Fear

For people whoever had anxiety panic attacks in their life, they have known mortal fear. I certainly not recognized how critical an anxiety panic attack was until I had my very first. I have no idea if anxiety attacks run in families, but in my very own they sure do. My mom used to have them on a regular basis. By on a regular basis, of course, I mean once per month, however it seemed often enough. After one of her anxiety attacks, things were different for several weeks. It could take place anywhere, and her responses were unpredictable. From time to time, she would begin screaming at us hysterically. Sometimes, she would get bewildered and disoriented. The worst of which, oddly enough, were the times when she just simply broke down in sobs. She would get so upset, and practically nothing we can say or do would change it.

Growing up, I thought she was simply crazy. To tell you the truth, I sort of resented her for her anxiety panic disorder attacks. I felt like she had been emotionally keeping my family hostage. I failed to recognize that anxiety panic attacks were beyond her control, or if I did understand it, I didn’t look closely at that fact.

So when, around the age of 25 I developed anxiety panic attacks, it absolutely was a scary experience. All of a sudden, I realized what mortal terror was. If you have an anxiety panic attack, you cannot do anything whatsoever. You cannot think, you can’t act, you can’t control your thoughts and emotions. At times, you are so entirely overwhelmed that you can lose control of your own behavior. Losing that kind of control is a truly terrifying experience.

Fortunately, there are more treatments for anxiety panic attacks than there were when my mother first got her symptoms. First of all, of course, there are anxiety support groups. These are a great way of dealing with the difficulty that anxiety panic attacks place on your life. People in your support group are really the only people who can surely understand you. Aside from that, the drugs have gotten much better. Anxiety treatment is better than it has ever been before, and every year they seem to be coming out with new drugs.

Aside from drugs, however, there are some pretty interesting and novel treatments. There is therapy of course, and there is also hypnosis. You hear very different things about the effectiveness of hypnosis in treating anxiety panic attacks. Some people swear by it, but others aren’t so sure. So far, I have had some positive results with it, but it is too soon to tell.

Telling Your Family About A Mental Health Issue

Due to the many stigma attached to mental health issues, it can sometimes be hugely difficult for a sufferer to confide in individuals about their condition. They may feel that their confession will be laughed off as being all in the mind, or that it will change the way people look at them. In many cases the fear will be disproportionate to reality – but then, this is how mental health issues affect people.

There is a traditional opinion that mental health issues are somehow less serious than physical conditions. Because a physical condition is usually something that can be seen, there is a tendency to rate them as being more serious than mental health issues. But depression, OCD, SAD and others have affected people so badly that they kill themselves – so it is only right that they are treated seriously too.

In most cases, the anxiety over telling a family member of a mental health condition will be misplaced. They will be concerned for the sufferer and want them to get better. As yet, widespread understanding of mental health issues is not uniformly great, and it may take more explanation than a physical condition. However, in the end the family member will want their brother, son, wife or other family member to feel better, and will learn what they can to help them.

Aside from this, a family has a right to know that their relative is ill. They would be horrified if the secret went to the grave and they had not had a chance to help. It may be difficult to face up to, but telling family is important.

Can Herbal Medicine Cure Anxiety Problems?

In the late 1980s to the early 1990s, the world went mad for Prozac. Everyone, seemingly, was on the most famous anti-depressant of them all… until a few, select clinical studies showed it could actually worsen symptoms. Even though expert doctors tried to stress that Prozac was completely safe in all but a few cases (as with any drug), the damage was done – drugs for mental health problems are still distrusted by many to this day.

This leads many people suffering from depression or anxiety problems to turn their backs on conventional medicines, and seek out a herbal solution. There are some famous remedies touted, the most famous of which being St. John’s Wort as an aid for both depression and anxiety problems. Anxiety specifically has the famous Rescue Remedies, based on herbal ingredients, which claim to calm and soothe the user when ingested.

So do they work? Well, yes and no. For a start, with any medicine, herbal or otherwise, there is a placebo element that must be considered. If someone with an anxiety problem is told that Rescue Remedy will absolutely, undoubtedly help them, they may believe it will help so much that it actually does. While the medicine itself has not helped, the effect is the same – mind over medical matter, almost.

Bearing this in mind, it is important to say there is no firm, clinical evidence that St. John’s Wart or anything other herbal remedy can help with an anxiety problem. There is certainly no physiological evidence. It would appear your money is best spent on therapies and psychiatric understanding, though there is no reason not to give a herbal remedy a try once in awhile.

Is “Mental” Health Really Just In The Mind?

Imagine you are asked to describe what depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or Bi Polar Disorder are. Would you say “mental health problems”, or similar? Most would, and there is a general perception that these problems are purely based in the mind. There is still something of an attitude that people with mental health and anxiety problems should be able to “snap out of it” or get over it, just like that. Yet many mental illnesses actually have physical reasons.

For example, clinical depression. A much-misused term, depression is now used to describe someone feeling a bit low. However, if someone has full, clinical depression, they will experience long periods of horrifically low mood, low motivation and a general feeling of emptiness. A cruel illness, but one that is described as being mental, and a regular target for the “pull yourself out of it!” brigade.

Yet depression does have a physical basis. Depression is caused by a lower-than-average amount of serotonin in the body. Also known as the “feel good” hormone, serotonin controls the mood, personality and feelings of an individual. If serotonin levels are low, the individual will experienced depressive, low thoughts. This is a physical problem with mental evidence, but it is physical nonetheless – anti-depressants work on increasing serotonin levels, and tend to have a decent success rate.

Furthermore, preliminary scans have shown those with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder have enlarged lobes at the front of the brain. These lobes control our worry and anxiety mechanism, and when enlarged, the anxiety goes into overdrive – resulting in what we know as OCD.

So these mental illnesses are, more often than not, physical in basis after all – and one can no more “shake off” or “get over” a hormone imbalance than one can “shake off” a broken leg!