Thursday, July 16, 2009

Panic Attacks and Agoraphobia

By Gordon Dalwood

Panic Attacks are part of the group of anxiety conditions and are seldom understood. Many individuals do understand what constitutes a panic attack, many others do not know what can bring on these panic attacks. The connection between panic attacks happening and agoraphobia is interesting, agoraphobia can be one of the causes of the attacks.

Agoraphobia is not completely understood all the time, due to numerous people not knowing that this is linked to anxiety problems. This disorder is all about people feeling anxiety in either a strange place or situation. One example of the disorder would be if a person is scared to be in big open spaces or settings, that they do not normally visit, these people will have problems in even a rural area. With so many kinds of environmental conditions available, people suffering because of agoraphobia can suffer endlessly. Even though the settings will vary they can all bring on the panic attacks.

As the name implies, a panic attack infers to a severe amount of anxiety overcoming an individual until the person begins to manifest severe mental and physical problems as a result. These attacks can be long or short in duration but they are always serious.

Some of the confusion comes from the person not being capable of fleeing the situation or thus the flight. The person might be at an event with someone else and not be able to leave (or take flight). This would be quite impolite and could also not be possible if the other person was driving the person that is agoraphobic to the event. This type of predicament could cause severe stress, which then could turn into a serious panic attack.

Part of this confusion derives from the fact that the person may not be able to achieve flight. If a person opts to attend a football game with a friend, flight may not be possible. It would either be rude to leave or it may not even be possible if it was the friend drove the agoraphobic person to the game. Such a situation could lead to extreme stress which, in turn, could lead to a severe panic attack.

How does a person handle a panic attack at an inconvenient moment? You should take several deep breaths, which will help you calm down, get your breathing under control, and your heart to slow and start beating normally again. This does help bring everything back under control. It only be a temporary fix, and the main problem still requires treatment to keep from having anymore episodes in the future.

Clearly, the best way to deal with curtailing the effects of a panic attack and its association with agoraphobia would be to seek professional help. A qualified mental health professional can certainly provide a treatment plan that would reduce the many problems associated with these conditions. As such, seeking professional help is recommended since the problem will not go away on its own.

Agoraphobia on its own is a very serious condition and when coupled with panic attacks, should be treated with a lot of care. Again to repeat, this disorder will not cure itself.

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