Apart from the more run-of-the-mill upper chest, mouth breathing, chest pain, sweaty palms, and pounding heart kind of symptoms, some people experience tunnel vision, numbness down one side of their body, and their hands or mouth go into spasm. None of these symptoms should be trivialised as they can all be frightening.
No one can feel the fear except the person in the situation, and others around them may display impatience or a lack of sympathy because they do not recognise just how debilitating these symptoms can be.
The most common symptoms of a panic attack include:
An increase in the symptoms that are least liked, or even the thought that these symptoms might occur at any moment, can cause the panic attack as much as the other way around.
When the person registers a change in the symptoms that they dislike, or they fear that an imminent situation will cause this to happen, the fight or flight response reacts more strongly. The increased response further increases the level of symptoms, which increases the intensity of the fight or flight response, which increases the level of symptoms...
"I am sure that I constantly monitored my heartbeat. It wasn't always a conscious thing, but somewhere deep in my brain I nearly always seemed to be aware of that faint thudding in my chest. Whenever it would beat a bit faster, like when I ran to answer the phone, I would instantly notice it.
I didn't like the feel of it beating faster or stronger, and so I suppose that it scared me a bit. My Buteyko teacher says that I probably increased my breathing a bit more when I noticed the heartbeat, because then it would go faster still. Sometimes you could see it pulsing in my upper chest. It was horrible." Judith
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