Panic attack situations

 The most common situations for a panic attack to occur are

• When driving a car
• While watching television
• In bed
• Going on holiday

It is fairly safe to say that most people know that these common situations that cause panic attacks are not ordinarily dangerous, and so you might wonder why they are likely to cause panic?

The most basic reason is that they all can easily involve hyperventilation. While watching television or driving a car there is often maximum stimulation, but minimum movement. For example, you are driving down a narrow road, when round the corner comes a vehicle on the wrong side of the road.

Driving a car is an activity that involves about the same level of metabolism as sitting in a chair does. This means that the breathing should be quiet, relaxed, and probably about twelve breaths a minute. If you are suddenly faced with a car racing towards you on the same side of the road as you are driving on, this is clearly a dangerous situation, which the fight or flight response reacts to in an instant by revving up the breathing and other actions to allow you to move quickly.

However, you do not get out of the car and run away, but instead continue to sit in the driver's seat steering your way out of danger. To do this, your physical requirement for breathing is relatively low, and so the increased breathing pattern caused by the fight or flight becomes hyperventilation.

Hyperventilation causes the symptoms that you don't like. This increases the breathing further, until the symptoms get stronger, and the sense of panic increases.

It is easy to see that while watching television a similar situation can occur because the subconscious brain responds to perceived danger in the same way as it does to that which is real. For example, every child's heart pounds while watching the evil stepmother with the apple in the Disney film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The people are clearly cartoons and so even though the situation is not even real, fear is stimulated just the same.

While in bed, sound asleep while lying on your back with your mouth open is a classic way of hyperventilating. The loss of carbon dioxide sets in train a whole range of problems for the body that initiates the fight or flight response.