Hi again, as promise in first part….here are the tips which could help managing panic attacks and an alternative treatment for panic disorder.

Coping Technique – The Shield
Of all the coping techniques, Benzodiazepines like Xanax, Valium and Ativan usually work the fastest and have immediate effects.  In less than twenty minutes these medications kick in and are powerful enough to stop any type of panic attack.  Unfortunately as with all medications there are always side effects.  These drugs can become familiar to your system and their effectiveness might decrease, they could become addictive to those with an addictive personality type or they could leave your feeling sleepy.  Benzodiazepines should only be prescribed to patients who are in the process of learning the cope and exposure techniques.  They are usually prescribed for daily use only in patients with really high anxiety and frequent panic attacks or as an emergency medication.  Benzodiazepines won’t cure panic and anxiety disorders, but will bring relief to those who are learning to control and master there anxiety through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

Coping Technique – Being removed from the situation
A coping technique that works well is removing yourself from a situation where a panic attack might be triggered or leaving the immediate environment with the onset of an attack.  Examples include pulling off to the side of the road, leaving a crowd of people or a situation or not continuing vigorous exercise.  Although a panic attack can be avoided, the draw back of this technique is that you are removing yourself from the exact same demon you should be exposed to and learn to face.   This is called agoraphobia and should only be done while in the process of definite treatment in learning to master the panic.

Coping Technique – Relaxation
When the situation allows, relaxation has a very positive effect on a panic attack.  Along with meditation, relaxation helps to distract your mind and teaches you to focus on thoughts other than the cause of your fear.  During meditation, you focus your thoughts on specific sounds or repeated breathing, leading your thoughts away and to a calmer and more peaceful state of mind.  By visualizing yourself doing something you enjoy or taking part in dancing or exercise, you fill your thoughts with visual images and enhance the feeling of relaxation.  The most effective relaxation technique is where you use eleven muscles to relax during Abdominal Breathing, Sensation Focusing and Permission Breath Counting.  Read more about these cognitive behavioral techniques at PanicMastery.com.  Relaxation techniques might in the beginning not seem likely to work effectively to stop a panic attack, but will become more effective as you learn to do them correctly and have started to expose yourself to your fears.  Because people are different and cope differently, more than once coping and relaxation technique is often taught.

Coping Technique – Thought Restructuring
This technique takes a little longer to work, but is extremely powerful and effective.  The idea is to talk back to yourself by writing down on paper what you want to tell your demon.  Do this every day for 10 minutes for 10 – 14 consecutive days where after you stop writing it down and start telling it to the negative thoughts in your head.    Thought restructuring, combined with relaxation techniques are the strongest and most powerful parts of your shield.  These two have no side effects and helps you overcome your panic and fear rather than avoiding it.  By exposing yourself to you fear, these two techniques become permanent parts of your shield and strength.

Exposure – Facing your demon
By exposing yourself to your fear, you learn to face your demon, challenge it and overpower it.  In a controlled environment you are exposed to a certain level of your fear which you can still handle and master.  On a scale from one to ten your level of voluntary fear should be a four or five.  Anything higher means you are no longer in control of your anxiety.  This is practices several times until you feel comfortable enough for a higher level of anxiety.  Most panic disorders are also a form of phobia which is a physical sensation like nausea, choking, pain, dizziness or a very fast beating heart.  These phobias can trigger a panic attack.  Exposing yourself to these sensations teaches you to cope with them and overcome them at different levels so that you will eventually have no more fear of you demon and no onset of panic attacks.  At this stage most patients can slowly but surely be taken off their medication.  Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, using exposure, is certainly the most effective of all therapies to master your anxiety and fears for good.

Although panic attacks are prone to occur in people who already suffer from depression, it can still happen to anybody anywhere and at any time.  Managing panic attack is not always easy, but possible and can be done by using a couple of fool proof alternative panic disorder treatment techniques.

The first panic disorder treatment technique is coping and the second, exposure.  Both techniques will be explained, but lets first discuss a panic attack through the demon analogy.

By seeing a panic attack as an attack by a demon, you can put your panic attack into perspective and fight it effectively.  The first effective way to resist or fight is to use a “shield”, meaning medication you can take to calm you down.  You can use techniques like relaxation exercises, breathing exercises or taking control of you anxious thoughts by talking back to them and reassuring yourself.  These techniques will be discussed later on in this article.    The second technique takes courage and willpower and is a very powerful technique and involves facing your panic attack demon and fighting back.  Every time you stand up and face your fear, the demon becomes smaller and the fear of it increases dramatically.  Exposing yourself to the fear and facing your demon head on, puts the power back into your hands and gives you the control you might otherwise lose.

Coping techniques or shields might at first seem weak techniques when your demon and fears are strong and you don’t see how you can stop the attack.  Perhaps you’ve been taking medication and you’ve done the relaxation exercised, yet they are not helping and the attack continues.  The demon you fear might seem so big that it just overrides your coping techniques and breaks through your shield.  This is when exposure to your demon eventually causes you to face it head on and every time it tries to attack you, it becomes smaller and the fear of it starts to disappear.  This is when your shield starts working.  After a couple of tries, the demon becomes so small, your shield so strong that he no longer poses as a threat to you and the demon and the fear disappears.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the tactic where you combine facing your fear or demon head on and using your relaxation techniques and medication as a shield against your demon.  These two techniques will in due time help you overcome all your fears of your demon and help you live a normal, happy life doing things you want to do with your friends, going places your feared before, and doing things you’ve never done before – all without panic. I will talk more on the next post regarding the panic disorder treatment techniques to help managing panic attack.