Panic Attack Symptoms

Panic Attack Symptoms 

For those who suffer from panic attack symptoms, such feelings may involve moments, or hours, of sheer, unremitting, terror. Panic attacksymptoms can negatively impact, as well as severely reduce, the quality of one’s life. Many sufferers of panic attack symptoms become reclusive, paranoid, individuals, nervous homebodies who simply cannot leave the safe confines of their homes. Many simply cannot “deal” with strangers or even family relations or formerly close friends, because their promixity causes unbearable anxiety, or feelings of paranoia, in addition to the unbearable nervousness and the physical symptoms extreme panic brings with it. 

Such panic attack symptoms can strike the sufferer without warning. Others may suffer morbid premonitions of an oncoming attack hours, or even days, before one actually arrives. These episodes of sheer, spine curdling, terror can occur even while one is sleeping. An individual who is in the grip of a panic attack may believe they are about to experience a heart attack or stroke, or that death in some unknown form is undoubtedly imminent. 

It is to be stressed that the terror and sense of impending doom that the sufferer of panic attack symptoms experiences is very often far out of proportion to their factual state of physical health. Likewise, sufferers of panic attack syndromes can exhibit reactions to environmental stimuli (a car engine backfiring, a neighbor shouting loudly at his dog, children setting off firecrackers, etc.) that are overreactions to the degree of danger that is actually present around them. 

Most individuals who suffer from panic attack symptoms exhibit one, or several, of these following tell tale signs: 

Feeling faint, dizzy, or otherwise weak, sometimes accompanied by loss of balance, or even an actual fainting episode. The individual who is suffering these panic attack symptoms may additionally remark upon a pronounced sensation of “tingling” in their fingers or toes, or complain of a feeling of “numbness” which causes them to experience severe awkwardness of movement, or even temporary paralysis.

Difficulty in breathing, sometimes accompanied by a hypochondriacal sensation of “hypertension”. Sufferers who exhibit these panic attacksymptoms may need to breathe into a paper bag to calm themselves down. 

Closely related to this as another of the most common panic attack symptoms is the sensation of a “racing” or “speeding” heart, i.e., the sensation that one’s heart is beating at a far faster rate than is healthy, and which may lead at any moment to a heart attack, hemorrhage, or even an explosion.

Many who exhibit panic attack symptoms can suddenly experience feverish chills, or become bathed in sweat. Clammy palms and foreheads are a notable sign of this condition, which may or may not be precipitated by a logical reaction to an actual cause. Many sufferers of these panic attack symptoms break out in a “cold sweat” simply upon hearing that a relative or former acquaintance is arriving shortly for a social visit. 

Accompanying one or several of these panic attack symptoms as their aggregate is the sensation of loss of control, whether physical or purely mental. The overall mood of the sufferer may decline notably in the minutes or hours before the onset of a major panic attack. They may exhibit a feeling of helpless, “Stoical”, resignation to their fate, and may make no precautionary moves to try to forestall it. Many such individuals have “given up” on trying to deal with their feelings, and simply regard themselves as helpless slaves to their panic attacksymptoms and the underlying nervous condition that they signpost to. 

By far the most disagreeable of these panic attack symptoms are the horrifying feelings of closely impending death, or the doom that predestines them to a miserable demise, reprieve from which is simply not to be had. A sense of judgment, whether by God or the Devil or their fellow man, and the swiftly oncoming receipt of a “guilty” verdict in the court of life, are feelings which many confess to. 

Whether these feelings arrive from conscious remorse concerning a past misdeed, or simply from thin air, makes no difference to the one who lives with these panic attack symptoms. For them, death is a certainty, and only the form in which it arrives for them is unknown. Of course, those who exhibit panic attack symptoms often go on to invent the most outlandish forms of cruel punishment, torture, and death for themselves. Many supposed “Saints” of the Catholic Church, for example, have been retroactively identified as sufferers from this disorder. 

In conclusion, it should be noted that panic attack symptoms are treatable. Panic disorder has been proven in many cases to respond to psychotherapy as well as medication (antidepressants and beat blockers chief among them). With the help of a medical or psychiatric professional, panic attack symptoms can thus be overcome or, at the very least, greatly reduced, so that the sufferer can return to a fear free, productive, and healthy life among his peers.