Panic attacks and question for MBTI Yodas:)

I have semi-frequent issue with panic/anxiety attacks.

The biggest suggestion I have is to cut caffeine from your diet, if you are a person who drink coffee/tea/energy drinks. And I mean, completely. This markedly helped me.
If you absolutely have to drink caffeine, try not to drink large amounts at a time.
Drinking it slowly, over longer periods of time.

Secondly, when you feel the symptoms coming on, consider going for a walk/run, if you can.
Exercise in general is good for easing depression and anxiety throughout the day, and also makes you feel good in general because it kicks out feel-good chemicals in your brain.

And fresh air can be a nice treatment for the symptoms themself.
Additionally, slowing your breathing can help, too.
Let your breath out about twice as slow as you let it in.

 

Hi Jana.

While I can't tell you what function is at play when you go into panic mode, I can tell you that I know exactly how you feel. I have generalized anxiety disorder, and while I don't get panic attacks very often, when I do, I do very much the same thing you do. I remind myself that this is just a phase, and that it'll pass. If I'm able to, I'll distract myself. I'll go online, switch on the TV, call someone, or if I'm out in public somewhere, I look for a place to sit down to avoid being conspicuous and count to one hundred. That usually does the trick.

Have you seen a doctor or a therapist about this? Panic and other anxiety disorders are highly treatable with either medication, talk therapy or both. I found the most success with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. The methods teaches you how to talk yourself through an episode, and how to prevent yourself from having one. I encourage you to google for some articles, or check out some books at the library or the bookstore. It'll introduce you to some of the basics.

Good luck.

 

I get those quite frequently. I don't know if it's a panic disorder but I tend to think alot of bad things when I'm in this state. Like what TDHT said, I go outside and think of happy thoughts, take a deep breath and if that doesn't help I go to sleep and hopefully the next day when I wake up everything would go back to normal.

I tend to think that these episodes are more of my consciousness telling me that I'm not in the correct path, that I must change something in my life but who knows, maybe there's something wrong with me.

 

I have partial panic attacks on a regular basis.

One time I had a full blown one and it was like

I almost passed out it was really scary.

 

My panic attacks are rather isolated, but the only way I can cope is to completely shut down. Unfortunately it's usually at a really bad time. But it happens. *Shrugs.* I'm learning how to deal with them.

 

I was suffering from severe panic disorder for 7 years. I used to have at least 3-4 severe panic attacks a day, and around 7-8 smaller scale ones. I still have them sometimes.

It took me a long time to completely overcome this issue, and I tried many ways, from medication to trying to forget about my problem altogether. To tell you the truth, I have no idea what made them go away, but I usually tried to do the following things when I used to have them.

For small scale panic attacks:
1) When realising than I would have a panic attack, I immediately chewed gum( Yeah I know it's funny but sometime it worked.)
2) I stayed quiet not showing any reaction knowing that it would pass. Small scale panic attacks are not that frightening.

For large scale panic attacks:
1) Turn your feelings to anger momentarily. That requires a lot of self control. Thinking of things you deeply hate or want to destroy helps overcome the anxiety, which seemed to be the main trigger in my case.
2) My personal way of overcoming them was a bit harder though. I merely defined my existence and my actions in my head as insignificant. The moment I would manage to convince myself that whatever I do does not really matter, and whether I live or die the world wouldn't really care, I sensed a strange sense of relief, and the panic attack would just go away.

Remember. Always breath slowly when having a panic attack.