What Triggers A Panic Attack?

The wave of fear races through you. You feel cold and hot at the same time. You’re frozen to the spot yet also have a restless urge to move. Your heart pounds in your chest and you can feel it beating in your ears. You breathe faster and faster yet still feel like you can’t breathe or get enough air. Your mind races, you can’t think straight, you may feel sick and you feel desperate. If it’s your first panic attack you probably have no idea what is going on and you might well call for an ambulance thinking it’s a heart attack or stroke.

If you’ve ever had a panic attack then you very likely remember it. You may be able to very vividly go back to that time in your mind and certain details will stick out clearly. It may be what you saw, what you heard, the feeling of panic or even a smell that was there at the time. The fear, discomfort and anxiety can loom large in your mind. Some people can recall panic attack details clearly yet don’t have any of the old feeling when they think back. For others, just thinking back on it is like going back in time and experiencing again some of the fear and panic.

I can vividly recall the panic attacks that I used to experience. The wave of panic and cold fear, the frantic feelings and struggle to function normally. There were times I was in tears as the panic took hold and I struggled to even leave the house.

Having experienced a panic attack you can then live in fear and dread of another one happening. It can lead to an ongoing sense of anxiety and worry that can filter into other aspects of your life. You feel anxious that you may have a panic attack, you struggle when one happens and then you feel drained and exhausted afterwards.

Having experienced one panic attack, you may get others that seem to come out of nowhere. This just adds to the uncertainty and fear as you can never be sure what might happen and when. So what triggers a panic attack?

What Triggers a Panic Attack?

If you’ve ever had a panic attack then you will likely vividly remember the time, the place and the events that were happening at the time. You can remember clearly how you felt and the thoughts you had, or the inability to think clearly, that dominated you at the time. You might also remember the after effects as you struggled to recover and make sense of things afterwards.

You very likely find yourself thinking about what could have triggered your panic attack. You may struggle to find an answer and that adds to the worry that another unexpected panic attack could happen at any time. Even if you can pinpoint what led to it, you know how unpleasant it would be to go through a similar thing again. It’s quite common for a client to tell me how their panic attack seemed to come out of nowhere. Everything in life may have been fine at the time and then, from out of the blue, it hits you. All the fear, panic and anxiety takes over. As you try to think logically about it, it may make no sense.

What is often the case however, is that before your panic attack, there was a build up of stress and worry. It may have been about a lot of smaller things that were going on in your life, or even something a bit bigger. Either way, it hits a tipping point. The inner stress and anxiety builds up to the point where your mind interprets that there is a threat of some kind occurring and your fight or flight response kicks in to help you to protect yourself and stay safe.  All of the physical, psychological and behavioural things you experience during a panic attack are things you are designed to do when faced with a threat so you can escape and have the strength and energy in your muscles to accomplish this. With a panic attack, your safety response is firing off when it isn’t actually needed.

Often the build of prior stress and anxiety gets forgotten because of the overwhelming levels of panic your experience. Looking back logically, no one thing may have been enough on its own, but the build up reached a kind of tipping point where your panic response is initiated.

Not only that, but sometimes there is even a delay from all the stress and anxiety going on and before the panic attack actually happens. You feel like you were dealing with things and then, after a few days or weeks, it all catches up just when you feel everything is life is reasonably ok or when in a situation of minor stress (which becomes the final straw into a panic attack). That adds to your confusion over what triggers a panic attack. And so you could be driving along in the usual way and suddenly the fear and panic is upon you. Or maybe you are sitting down to eat and just as you pause to relax you are overcome by panic.

Having a panic attack itself is overwhelming and unpleasant. Then there is the worry and anxiety about having another panic attack. On top of that, there is the problem that your mind works on patterns. Your mind will forget all about the stress and anxiety that may have contributed to your panic and will attach the fear and threat to whatever was happening at the time. And so, if you have a panic attack when driving along the motorway, you may find that the next time you try to go on a motorway you have a panic attack. Your mind has tagged this situation as a threat that you need to be ready to respond to. Of course, you may then just avoid motorway driving, even if you’ve done thousands of miles totally fine in the past.

And here is an added problem when looking at the question of what triggers a panic attack. Everything with ongoing panic attacks depends on the pattern your mind creates. For one person who has had a panic attack when motorway driving, it is only motorway driving that continues to be a panic problem. For others, your mind may decide that one multi lane road is a lot like another and you start to get panic attacks, seemingly out of the blue, when on dual carriageways. After all, to your mind, one road is a lot like another and one perceived threat is a lot like another too. It could even spread into all driving, and even being a passenger in a car. The pattern of panic can spread into more and more situations.

Panic attacks can then spread and strike again, you may avoid certain things that are associated with previous panic situations and you may find other attacks happen even in other places and situations. It can feed into anxiety, worry about what others think and the dread of feeling that bad again.

Panic Attack Hypnotherapy

Your mind will attach the fear and anxiety to that final moment and situation where the panic attack happened. The rest of the stresses and anxiety that contributed to it fade from memory and that final thing is tagged by your mind as a threat. Anytime you then go into a similar situation your mind has learnt it is a threat and so the panic happens.

Your mind works on patterns and so logically it may seem difficult to understand what is going on. Logically you know you are safe but to your mind it is just like that previous threat.  Your mind pattern matches and it can spread and impact on more and more of your life. Along with this you start thinking about the possibility of another panic attack and you can end up feeling anxious even when not actually in those problem situations.

With hypnotherapy, you can retrain your mind that those situations are safe, just as you know they logically are. You need to be able to feel calm just imagining and thinking about being in those situations. Hypnotherapy can help you to learn how to manage your feelings and thoughts before and during situations. You can then retrain your mind, start to take positive steps and build forwards. You can manage and orchestrate your own thoughts and feelings and feel happier as you get on with your life with calmness and confidence.

To your health and happiness, 

Dan Regan

Award Winning Hypnotherapy for Anxiety Ely & Newmarket

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